A House Divided
by QoS
Summary: The Stunticons have had enough of Motormaster, and he "disappears" under suspicious circumstances. But they're not sure whether he's really dead or coming back for revenge, and their new leader has to hold together a team that's rapidly falling apart.
1. All Who Take The Sword

A HOUSE DIVIDED

"_A house divided against itself cannot stand." -- Matthew 12:25._

_Warning: Dark themes, violence, implied slash. _

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**Chapter 1: All Who Take The Sword**

"…_for all who take the sword shall perish by the sword."-- Matthew 26:52._

The Stunticons limped back home in defeat.

It wasn't the first time they had lost a battle, and Dead End knew it would not be the last. It wasn't even the worst possible outcome, since they were all still functional, but he was just as certain that that wouldn't last for long.

Motormaster was in the lead, since none of them wanted to be near him when he was in a cold fury over their failure. The four other Stunticons drove just behind him. They kept perfect pace with each other, no one falling back or edging forward, nothing that would make them stand out.

Injured and tired though they were, they maintained that exact line over mile after mile through the desert; matching each other when it came to driving was instinctive. The highway stretched ahead of them, wide and empty. _The humans must have heard of the battle,_ Dead End thought, _though they're probably getting the news of the Autobots' win right about now. Which should be reason enough to reopen the roads and come after us._

And the raid had been a disaster. They hadn't been able to grab more than half a dozen cubes of energon, which had looked even smaller and fewer in the emptiness of Motormaster's trailer. After that, they had been outnumbered and outgunned so badly that Motormaster had had to call a retreat even before Megatron did. _He'll take it out on us later,_ Dead End had thought wearily.

The highway cut through cliffs that cast sharp-edged shadows in their way. The land around was a deserted stretch of stones and dust, featureless except for the uneven rise and fall of hills. _Like a metaphor for our lives,_ Dead End thought as he kept one optical sensor on their surroundings and the other on his own diagnostics. His core temperature was rising as his systems struggled to deal with the wounds he had taken in the battle, as well as keeping a normal pace of just over a hundred miles an hour.

On one side of him, Drag Strip was trailing the odd wisp of smoke from his engine block, but he said nothing. None of them dared to make a sound, but their radios finally crackled into life when Wildrider spoke.

"_Tire's going_," he said.

Wildrider always had more tire blowouts than the rest of them, thanks to what was crazy driving even by Stunticon standards, and replacing it would take only a minute or two. But it would hold them up, and worse, draw Motormaster's attention.

Dead End heard a heavy, muffled popping sound as the tire finally gave way. Wildrider slewed to one side and over the hard shoulder, the guardrail buckling when his hood crashed into it. There was a heat-shimmer of a forcefield taking the brunt of the impact.

"_Keep driving,_" Wildrider said over the radio. "_I'll catch up._"

Motormaster braked, eighteen wheels screeching as he came to a halt. _Here it comes, _Dead End thought as he stopped as well. Wildrider had already transformed and was unscrewing his tire hastily, as if hoping he could complete the replacement before he had the slag beaten out of him.

The semi reversed slowly. Breakdown and Drag Strip had halted as well, and although they blocked the highway, Dead End doubted they would have been able to move unless Optimus Prime himself had been barreling down it.

"Drag Strip." Motormaster's voice was cold and utterly emotionless. "Unload the cubes."

Transforming while carrying a volatile substance like energon wasn't to be recommended; it could make an already unhappy existence that much more miserable, but significantly shorter. Drag Strip transformed as well and hesitated, looking as though he would have preferred to jump over the guardrail and into the ravine next to them rather than approaching the big semi.

"Do it!" Motormaster snarled.

Wildrider had the ruined wheel off by then. He tossed it down and slapped a spare tire into place.

Drag Strip's mouth tightened, but for once he had the good sense not to say anything. He stepped up to the rear of the trailer as it opened, then scooped out two handfuls of cubes that looked pathetically inadequate. Dead End transformed, then stepped over the ruined guardrail and sat down on a large boulder, not caring whether that would scrape his paint. If he was going to be beaten up – and considering what kind of mood Motormaster was in, that wasn't an _if_ – he could at least rest for a moment first.

Motormaster transformed. Dead End stared off into the distance and listened to the sound of Wildrider tightening lug nuts, Breakdown's internal fans whirring, heavy footsteps coming closer. He could sense the leaden, paralyzing fear that came over the gestalt bond from his teammates, but all he felt was a tired resignation. If the Autobots didn't slag him to the Pit and back, Motormaster would. _It isn't the first time and it won't be the last. Let's just get it over with._

He would have liked to hope that it wouldn't be too bad, but he knew better than to hope for anything.

"Breakdown." Motormaster's voice was quiet, which meant an imminent beating – at best. "I ordered you to get into the factory and wait there while we drove the Autobots towards you or until they came closer by themselves to rescue their pets. Then you were to disrupt their engines and allow us to pick them off. Why didn't you do it?"

"Th-there were too many humans." Breakdown took a step back, though there was nowhere to go. "They were _looking_ at me--"

Dead End heard a _clang_ of metal against metal and a gasp. "Is _that_ as bad as them looking at you?" Motormaster said in a tone of clinical curiosity. "Well?" There was the sound of another sharp blow. Breakdown had probably been bracing for that one, since he tried to answer the question.

"N-no. Yes." His voice was breathless, taut with pain. Dead End felt the effects of that as well, like cold quicksilver sliding through the gestalt bond, and he knew it would only get worse. He could have blocked it out had Motormaster been the one being beaten up (_ah, wishful thinking_) but it was far more difficult with one of his other teammates; they shared too much.

"No or yes?" The _clang_ had turned into a _crrnch_, as metal began to give way under Motormaster's fist.

"_Which answer's right?_" Breakdown said frantically over one of the private radio channels they used.

"_What does it matter? He's going to hit you no matter what you-_-"

"_Try maybe_," was Wildrider's contribution.

"_Say yes!_" Drag Strip snapped.

"Yes!"

"And yet you continue to function," Motormaster said, "rather than running off like you did before. So it can't be that bad." The blow was followed by the ugly, rattling thud of metal crashing against rock. Evidently Breakdown hadn't been able to keep standing. "Can it?"

Dead End turned his head despite himself; he didn't think Breakdown was in any condition to care about anyone looking at him now. A glistening mixture of half-processed fuel and lubricant trickled from one corner of Breakdown's mouth and the side of his jaw was mangled, probably dislocated, but he managed a shake of his head. Motormaster finally turned away from him.

"Wildrider," he said.

"Hey, boss," Wildrider said perkily.

Dead End didn't know whether that was Wildrider making a calculated attempt to get all of the pounding at once and have it done with, or whether that was Wildrider simply being as insane as always, but Motormaster's arm lashed out so fast that it was a blur. Wildrider struck the ground and rolled over, managing to catch the guardrail with one hand just before he would have gone over the edge. Dead End didn't think he would be doing anything with his other hand; that arm had taken the brunt of the blow and his fingers were twitching in an uncoordinated, spastic way.

Motormaster reached down, grabbed him by the spikes on his helm and hauled him back on to the road before dropping him in a heap. Dead End looked away again. He could tell what was happening from the sound of the kick, Wildrider's whimper, Motormaster's voice saying something about stupidity and recklessness that had given their position away to the Autobots.

He fought an urge to double over as the gestalt link transmitted the pain Wildrider could no longer control, though the next sound was the harsh rasp of metal on dusty asphalt as Motormaster moved away. Drag Strip was holding the cubes like a shield before him, aware that no one was going to hit him while he carried what little fuel they had, but Motormaster only sneered. "I'll deal with _you_ when we're back in the base," he said, lips peeling back in a smile that made Drag Strip flinch.

_And now it's my turn,_ Dead End thought. _How nice. More to the point, how even-handed. No one misses out when Motormaster's in a--_

A hand grabbed his shoulder. "Pay attention, Dead End, or one of your teammates will have to explain things to you." That was Motormasterese for _close yourself off and I'll hurt Wildrider or Breakdown or Drag Strip in your place, so they'll hate you as well as me_. "Why don't you even have your radar on?"

Dead End had expected to be berated about a lot of things, such as his inability to care what was going to happen to them (since he already knew what would happen – they would die soon and painfully). Or the fact that when the fighting had started, he had found a quiet corner where he could study his reflection in a broken piece of glass and ask what was the point of any of it. He remembered explaining to his reflection that whatever fuel they stole was just going to be used up and then they would be back where they started (except probably worse off from battle wounds), and his reflection had looked back at him in a sad kind of way, as if wondering why no one else understood that.

At which point two things had happened. Motormaster had yelled at him over the radio to get out and fight, and a stray shot had hit the glass, shattering it into a hundred splinters. Dead End remembered thinking that that had been a metaphor for his life as well. He'd expected to be called on the figurative carpet for that, rather than for… _radar?_

"Um, radar?" he said.

The problem about trying to roll with a punch was that if Motormaster saw him doing it, the punishment would be that much worse. And Dead End really didn't care enough by then to make the effort. His vision went black for a moment as his optics offlined, and he thought his gyros had been scrambled as well, before he realized he was actually falling. The backhand had been hard enough to spin him around, so his palms hit the road and spared his face a second impact, but Motormaster's foot thudded on the small of his back at once, pinning him down.

"See those?" he said grimly.

Dead End's optics came back online. Half of his face stung with heat and there was a crack in the unbreakable glass of his visor, but he didn't need the zoom enhancement to see the specks in the sky. Ignoring the pain and humiliation, he turned on his combat radar.

_Aerialbots. _

Exhaustion swept over him – why couldn't the 'bots leave them alone? Weren't they going to die soon enough? Wasn't it enough that Motormaster had beaten them already? – but he said nothing as the weight on his back lifted. He picked himself up dizzily, tasting coolant in his mouth from a broken line, as Motormaster transformed.

"_At least there's just four of them_," Wildrider said over a private channel, though he sounded more tired than optimistic.

They'd managed to take down the Aerialbot leader during the battle, but Dead End thought that this only showed the futility of even such a small success. _We've just made the rest of the mosquitoes angry enough to track us out here_. He drew his compressed-air rifle, but realized in the next moment that that was useless too. At the speeds the Aerialbots were moving, not to mention their altitude, hitting them would be difficult at best.

He tried aiming for a point just before where they were, but they split off in defensive maneuvers that were clumsy but effective. Drag Strip had shoved the cubes back into Motormaster's trailer by then, and the thunder of a powerful engine drowned out the sounds of the jets as the semi began to move.

"Stunticons, head out!" Motormaster roared.

Well, that was an option too. Dead End subspaced his gun and transformed, enduring the pain as he did so and not sure whether it came from him or one of his teammates. Tires thudded down to the ground as his engine revved. Drag Strip was nowhere in sight, and Dead End thought for a moment that he had raced ahead at a speed amazing even for him, but a quick check of the radar showed he was far closer at hand. Wildrider and Breakdown, still recovering from the discipline, were a little slower, and Dead End radioed them to tell them that he would bring up the rear.

Though Motormaster was slow as well, for some reason. Dead End didn't believe he was holding back on their account, and since their definition of "slow" was ten miles above the speed limit, they were still covering ground.

The Aerialbots were much faster, though. They streaked overhead, all firing at once. Laserbolts spattered harmlessly off forcefields but gouged smoking craters in the road. The Stunticons maneuvered around those easily enough, Dead End nearly skidding on two tires as he veered hard; even Motormaster didn't get his wheels caught in any of the ruts. The Aerialbots swept back for a second try.

Then they split up suddenly. The white Harrier and the red Phantom swooped low while the other two kept their distance and continued to fire.

Dead End slammed his brakes, skidding to a stop. Breakdown sped ahead, engine racing, giving off jagged dissonant vibrations that made Dead End feel as though his own joints were loosening.

_Or maybe that's the Aerialbots targeting us,_ he thought. Warnings began to flash in his HUD as his forcefield weakened from laserfire, but he knew that from the sky, the only thing the Aerialbots would see would be the bright spatter that told them the initial strikes weren't working. Then they'd switch to missiles.

_Correction: _now_ they switch to missiles. _

The grey F-16 wheeled, burning altitude, and loosed a missile straight at him. If he had been in better condition, Dead End would have used his thrusters to leap up and physically intercept the plane, but he couldn't afford it now. He took aim at the missile and fired.

Fast though it was, his processors calculated vectors and velocities in nanoseconds and his gun snapped out a burst of compressed air that deflected the missile at a sharp angle. The missile rammed into a cliff and detonated, burying a lower road with tons of rock and debris.

The F-16 shot overhead, then came back for another pass. While the Stunticons had been in the city, the Aerialbots wouldn't have dared to engage them with that kind of persistence in case humans were harmed in the crossfire, but in the open spaces, things were different. And they couldn't form Menasor, not with the cubes still in Motormaster's trailer.

But Motormaster had other plans. The back of his trailer flipped open abruptly and a yellow arm hooked around the trailer's roof. Bracing himself, Drag Strip took aim with his gravito-gun and fired.

The black F-15 plummeted like a stone but fought the fall, turning it into a far-too-fast descent. There was a sudden shadowy rush of scorched air above them as the F-15 came in at an angle, howling incoherently – Dead End couldn't tell whether in fury or fear or both. The Harrier's flight faltered as the effects of Breakdown's engines hit it, but the Phantom fired two missiles before yawing wildly to one side.

One missile struck the highway just ahead of Motormaster and detonated in a cloud of thick, choking fog. The second one exploded off his forcefield.

Motormaster jolted violently, spilling Drag Strip on to the ground before he disappeared into the mist. Wildrider's tires screeched as he halted, transforming a second later. He groped for his scattershot gun with his good hand. Dead End didn't think he could aim very well in his condition, but since the gun would fire a beam of lasers that spread out widely, he was sure to hit the red jet.

Breakdown skidded away from the cloud of mist before them. Motormaster wasn't even visible within it, and Dead End suddenly knew that the mist was going to kill them in some way. _Is it poisonous? Corrosive?_ He activated all his sensors, dragging in wisps of the vapor through his intakes.

_Flammable,_ he thought just as Wildrider fired.

The beam of lasers fanned out, striking one of the Phantom's white wings and the growing cloud of mist simultaneously.

Dead End threw himself down, an arm going over his head reflexively. A wave of boiling heat, almost solid, rushed over him as the mist turned into a fireball; he felt his paint scorch and blister as his forcefield finally went down. A hoarse roar rang in his audials, though he thought that might have been just the echoes of the explosion.

Keeping his optics offline, he checked his radar. The other Stunticons were still alive, to his mild surprise, though the Aerialbots were active as well. _That's only to be expected._ Still, they had been scattered by the explosion and seemed to be retreating, though he felt sure that that was a feint; they would undoubtedly regroup in moments and close in for the kill.

He let his optics go back online and sat up. The air was thick with smoke, but a red flash in the grey was Wildrider getting up groggily, shaking his head.

"_Dead End_?" Breakdown said over the radio. "_You two all right?_"

The side of Dead End's face still hurt fiercely where Motormaster had hit him, and he supposed there would be further punishment once they were back in the base. What was the point in being "all right", even by their loose definition of the term? The Aerialbots might as well have deactivated him and saved Motormaster the trouble. He struggled to his feet without answering.

"_My elbows are scraped down to the primer,_" Drag Strip muttered. "_Lost my grip when the fragging 'bots fired--_"

The smoke was starting to clear, and Dead End caught a glimpse of the Aerialbots in the distance, two of them trailing dark plumes. Wildrider spotted them as well and grinned, though when he spoke Dead End could tell he was too tired to laugh. "Guess we kicked their afts but good," he said.

"_They…_" Breakdown hesitated. "_I think they did what they came to do._"

The tone of his voice was warning enough; Dead End turned sharply. "What's happened?" he said aloud.

"Where's the boss?" Wildrider said, so quietly that Dead End would not have heard him if they had not been standing still.

Dead End stood where he was, not moving, one optic on his radar as Wildrider stepped forward unsteadily. His sensors registered a slight wind that felt cool against his scorched chassis and sifted away the last of the smoke.

Breakdown was on the other side of the highway, his paintjob smeared with dust and soot from the fire; Drag Strip didn't look much better, but he was on his feet as well, looking around in puzzlement. There was no sign of Motormaster.

Drag Strip froze suddenly. Dead End followed his line of sight over the pitted and burned lanes that still showed tire tracks where something heavy had skidded hard. The guardrail just ahead was twisted and broken, but the grey paint scraped against it was visible now that the smoke had cleared away.

Breakdown hurried to the side of the road and glanced down over the edge. Drag Strip, for possibly the first time in his life, was slower. "How badly is he damaged?" he said, without looking to see for himself.

Wildrider nearly knocked him into the ravine as well as he bounced closer, took a look and let out a long, low whistle. "Think we'll need to call the 'Structies to get him out?"

"Yeah," Breakdown said, leaning over with both hands braced on the intact portion of the guardrail. "I tried him on the radio… he's not responding. Still, he's not dead."

Drag Strip took a step back and a faint glow began behind his visor. Dead End remembered that long afterwards, remembered it as the moment when the nightmare began, when Drag Strip said the words that started them all down a road they had never traveled before, a road which would divide them and lead them alone into dark places.

He said, "Not _yet_."


	2. Le Roi Est Mort

**Chapter 2 : Le Roi Est Mort**

_Le Roi est mort; vive le Roi! English translation: "The King is dead; long live the King!" _

It was the way Drag Strip said that. There was no threat or even mockery in his voice, none of the sneer Dead End was used to. If there had been, they would all have taken it as his venting exhaust. Instead, he spoke as if to himself, and he never once looked at the other Stunticons to see their reaction. His gaze was fixed on the bottom of the ravine just beyond the highway.

Deliberately, Dead End leaned over to look as well, both to give Drag Strip a chance to pretend he'd never spoken and to see what had happened to Motormaster. He was expecting horrific damage, so he was both mildly relieved and mildly disappointed to see that Motormaster was still in one piece.

He guessed the missiles had taken down Motormaster's forcefield and knocked him offline, since he was still in alt-mode, but his trailer was crumpled. Dead End couldn't see much more. Motormaster had gone down the side of the ravine in a small landslide, cab first, dislodging enough of the slope with him that it partially hid him from view. The trailer, twisted at something of an angle, blocked the rest, though from the faint threads of smoke steaming up from beyond it, Dead End could tell there was some engine damage or a burst radiator or both.

They would probably need the Constructicons, he thought. The ravine looked deep enough to be the bed of a dry river, though it was so narrow that they wouldn't have much room to work in if Motormaster wasn't able to transform or use his thrusters. He glanced at the cliff on the other side of the ravine, wondering if it was unstable enough to crumble and collapse on Motormaster, but to his surprise that didn't seem likely.

_So we radio the Constructicons now,_ he thought. _Or we… do something else._ He turned, waiting to see if Drag Strip wanted to make anything more of the previous remark.

Breakdown and Wildrider had clearly had the same idea, since they were staring at Drag Strip too. He finally seemed to realize that he had everyone's attention, though again his reaction wasn't what Dead End expected.

"What?" he said, then went back to watching Motormaster with a fixed stare, his forearms braced on the guardrail. "Don't tell me none of you ever thought it."

"There's a difference between thinking it and doing it," Dead End said.

"No slag." Drag Strip straightened up. "And this is our only chance to do it."

Dead End's radio picked up an incoming transmission on one of the private channels Breakdown used. "_Should we just keep him talking?_" Breakdown said. "_If we do that for long enough, Motormaster might come back online and then we can forget about… about all this._"

Dead End wasn't sure how successful that would be, since Drag Strip tended to do everything fast, including making up his mind. He supposed they didn't have any other choice, though. "How do you think Megatron will react to losing Menasor?" he said.

"He's not going to scrap _us_. On top of losing a gestalt, he's not going to lose four grunts as well." Drag Strip looked around at them. "Besides, are _you_ going to miss Menasor? Any of you? D'you like not being in control of your own circuitry, or feeling how much Motormaster despises you?"

Wildrider shifted his weight on his feet, but said nothing; Breakdown didn't even try to look Drag Strip in the visor. _That's the problem with having another Stunticon make such a suggestion,_ Dead End thought. _An outsider might not know what buttons to press. Drag Strip does._

"And how do you propose we do it?" he said, since no one else seemed in a hurry to speak up.

Drag Strip unsubspaced his gun and looked down at it. "We've all got weapons."

Breakdown glanced nervously into the ravine, even though Motormaster was seventy feet below them and unlikely to hear. "_Dead End?_" he said over the radio.

"_Oh, he's still alive, surprisingly enough,_" Dead End replied. His combat radar detected that. "_Offline, though, and likely to remain so permanently if Drag Strip has his way._"

"So… we shoot him," Wildrider said, in the tones of someone wanting to establish the inconceivable.

Drag Strip looked up at that, face expressionless. The glow behind his visor was now an ember. "Tell Megatron the Aerialbots did it," he said, turning his gun over in his hands, fingers readjusting the weapon's settings absently. "Who else is out here to say differently?"

"Someone could be watching us," Breakdown said. "Maybe even Laser--"

"Oh, don't _start_." Drag Strip finally seemed to be annoyed out of his flat decisiveness. "No one's here. It's just us four. Our decision. Our choice, for once we get a choice, for once we get to decide what's going to happen to us."

Wildrider's optics went dark. "Okay. Then I don't choose to kill one of us. Ever."

"You think he'll thank you for that?" Drag Strip said fiercely. "Or even decide not to beat the slag out of you the next time you screw up? You want--"

"He's a Stunticon too." Breakdown's voice was low – and slurred from the ruined joint in his jaw – but resolute as well. "He's part of our team, part of us. What… what effect is it going to have on us if we kill him? If the link breaks?"

"Is that any worse than what he's already done to you? To all of us?"

When there was no reply, Drag Strip glanced at Dead End, as if to ask where he stood. There might have been a plea in the look as well, as if to ask, _Don't_ any_ of you agree with me at all?_ but Dead End looked away before he could be certain of it. The situation was tense enough already without Drag Strip trying to appeal to him, not that Drag Strip was very good at appealing, since he had little practice in doing so.

_Motormaster, gone._ Dead End tried to imagine what that might be like, but gave up. Motormaster had been created along with the rest of them and given life by Vector Sigma at the same time, so Dead End couldn't really imagine a life without him. _It would be like life without an arm… a hard vicious arm that punches you in the face ever so often._

Though their existence being what it was, he supposed that if they lost one cruel, controlling leader, they would get another cruel, controlling leader. Probably an even worse one, since Megatron would ensure that the second Stunticon leader would whip them into better shape and make sure they didn't rebel again.

Not that it was easy to imagine a leader who could have treated them worse than Motormaster did. Dead End didn't particularly want to kill him, since Motormaster was going to die anyway, just like everyone else; the world was a huge conveyor belt carrying them all towards a great common grave. But he could understand Drag Strip wanting to do so.

The rest of them usually resigned themselves to whatever Motormaster handed out – it was the quickest way to spare themselves excessive pain and get it over with. Drag Strip rarely did, though, at least not at first. His hypercompetitive streak and arrogance came out in confrontations with Motormaster, with the result that he ended up being more badly thrashed; he'd been sent to the repair bay more often than any of the rest of them. Even that didn't entirely crush his defiance, though, only drove it underground. They could all sense the smoldering resentment through the gestalt bond.

_I wonder why he bothers,_ Dead End had thought at first. He soon realized, though, that Drag Strip didn't feel he had any choice in the matter. Drag Strip doubted himself in many ways, which was why he was obsessed with proving himself better than everyone else. Which also meant he couldn't simply knuckle under to Motormaster; that would show he was weak, and he would end up hating himself.

Wildrider was a little more resilient when it came to handling punishments; his cheerful, self-assured nature would reassert itself sooner or later no matter how badly he was treated. But his insanity was just as predictable. He slipped away from reality when that became too much to bear, and it wasn't always easy to bring him back. The mental problems were a gift of Vector Sigma's, but Dead End thought that a better leader would have found a way to balance out Wildrider's craziness, rather than making it worse.

_A better leader might have helped Breakdown too. _Motormaster held them all in contempt, but Breakdown came in for the largest helping of that thanks to his paranoia and nervousness. Mockery and beatings only made him worse. And since there were precious few secrets in the Decepticon base, a lot of other 'cons seemed to take their cues from Motormaster and despised Breakdown. They saw the instability but not the intelligence – or the loyalty, for that matter.

_Motormaster isn't a good leader, we all know that. But does that mean getting rid of him is an option?_

He didn't even think he could fire at Motormaster, much less kill him. The four of them indulged in tussles and wrestling matches and exchanged the occasional punch over who got the good side of the couch, but those were routine, playful. In all of Dead End's life (admittedly a short one, and likely to remain so) he had never laid a hand on another Stunticon with the intention to harm.

And that was how it should be, he knew. That was the point of being a combiner team. The parts joined to make an unbreakable whole, standing together against whatever enemies they faced, so close that nothing could come between them. And a gestalt never turned on one of its members. Even Swindle remained a Combaticon after the incident where he'd sold his teammates for scrap.

_We close ranks in the face of any threat. But when that threat comes from within… _

"Come on, we don't have much time!" The tension in Drag Strip's voice finally registered – or perhaps it was transmitted over the gestalt link as well. "We could be free of him, slag it all! We'd never be hurt again…"

He stopped when he realized he was having no effect, then looked straight at Wildrider and his voice was very quiet when he spoke.

"You owe me," he said.

In that moment, Dead End knew he'd won one of them over to his side. A long time ago, Wildrider had had a moment of temporary rebellion and had raced away from the base, refusing to come back when ordered to do so. They all knew he would have returned eventually to accept whatever he deserved, but Motormaster had wanted to teach him a lesson more quickly – and much harder.

So it had been made clear that any such insubordination was dealt with by Wildrider's teammates taking whatever punishment was due to him, and Drag Strip had been first in line. Dead End had expected Drag Strip to hold a grudge for a long time, even with Wildrider feeling lower than a puddle on the pavement, but the two of them had reconciled surprisingly fast. And as far as he was aware, Drag Strip had never brought the matter up again.

_Until now._

Wildrider looked back at him for a long silent moment, though Dead End knew the two of them were speaking over the radio on another private channel. Then Wildrider glanced at him and Breakdown instead. "I'm with Drag Strip," he said briefly.

_Two against two._

The radio pinged again. "_Dead End?_" Breakdown said. "_What d'you think? Drag Strip's right about one thing… at least we won't be kicked around any time _he_ feels like it._"

"_Don't get your hopes up. We'll just face the business end of a fusion cannon when Megatron finds out. Still, that's significantly less painful if one is at the _center_ of the blast radius, so try to maneuver for that position when we're lined up before him._"

"_I…_" Breakdown began. "_I'll go along with whatever you decide._"

Dead End could have groaned aloud. He knew Breakdown meant to show solidarity, but he didn't want to be responsible for anyone else. "_Breakdown…_"

"Well?" Drag Strip said impatiently.

A sharp sound from the ravine made them all recoil. Dead End leaned over the guardrail cautiously, but all he saw was a few pebbles settling beside Motormaster's tires. He supposed the noise had just been the rocks shifting against each other.

"We don't have any time left," Drag Strip said. The tension in his voice was evident now.

_It's up to me to break a deadlock._ Which he didn't want to do, he didn't want to have anyone's life in his hands. His apathy ran deeper than the ravine, and it was his safeguard as well as his flaw; if he didn't care about anything, he was less likely to be hurt. The only chinks in that indifference were the other members of his team, and even then, they often frustrated him. Breakdown's foolish belief that things could somehow improve was just the latest.

_But is it foolish? Can our lives become any better? Can they get worse?_ Dead End was of the opinion that they were doomed no matter what they did. He couldn't shut out the hopefulness in Breakdown's voice, though, or the apprehension edging over into fear from Drag Strip.

_One thing's for sure. If Motormaster recovers, there won't be any difference in our lives, but if he dies… there will be. Maybe, just maybe, things will change._ Dead End wasn't capable of hope – as far as he was concerned, the light at the end of the tunnel was Astrotrain heading towards him at full speed – but there was a small wistful part of him that he knew was a spillover from Breakdown's side of the gestalt bond.

They were all staring at him now. Wildrider with no perceptible expression (how odd, Wildrider was usually the one whose emotions were writ large upon his faceplate), Breakdown with an expectant trust, Drag Strip with growing desperation. He hesitated a moment longer.

"_Please_," Drag Strip said over the radio.

Drag Strip had never pleaded for anything before, had never lowered himself to that extent. Dead End wondered if Motormaster would ever have shown even that instant of vulnerability. _No, he wouldn't ask for my support – or want it – and he'd probably just hit me until I agreed with him._ It put the seal on his decision.

"All right," he said as calmly as always. Out of the corners of his optics he saw the tension go out of Wildrider's and Breakdown's frames, but he didn't give any indication that he had noticed. He checked his combat radar reflexively, and sighed inwardly when he saw the new blips coming towards them.

"Do it fast," he said. "There are Autobots headed this way on the I-40."

Drag Strip glanced at his gun. "Not much this can do other than making the bastard heavier than he already is. Wildrider?"

Wildrider nodded slowly, drawing his scattershot gun as he took a pace towards the edge of the road. He bent his left elbow to make a mount, then took aim at the trailer far below.

The beam of lasers punched through Motormaster's rearmost tires, bursting them instantly, but the tougher metal of the trailer resisted. From where he stood, Dead End saw it turn red-hot under the concentrated fire, grey paint darkening and liquefying in the heat.

"This isn't any good." Wildrider abruptly turned the lasers off. "The laser-core's under too much shielding."

Breakdown joined him, staring down. "And at that angle…" Dead End knew what he meant. Since Motormaster had fallen cab-first, he wouldn't have been able to extricate himself on his own, but that also meant his only vulnerable parts, the CPU and laser-core, were beneath. _We'd have to cut through the trailer to reach them._

"The energon in the trailer…" Drag Strip said. "If we ignite that…"

Dead End didn't miss the sudden change in their wording, how it was _the_ laser-core and _the­­_ trailer instead of _his_ core or _his _trailer, but he'd forgotten about the energon. Megatron was going to be furious when he learned they'd lost the few drops of fuel they'd managed to grab as well as their leader, but it was too late to turn back now.

"The Autobots are forty miles away and closing," he said. "I'm sure they'll save us the effort of dealing with him by deactivating us _en masse_."

Wildrider shot again, using the broadest beam of lasers. Another tire blew, then another, but rather than burning holes through the trailer to hit the energon, the lasers were melting the metal instead. Wildrider made a tense irritated sound.

"The cliff," Drag Strip said. "Bury the fragger. Dead End?"

Deciding to kill him had been a joint effort, so Dead End expected that doing the deed would be similar. _We're in this together, all of us._ He drew his compressed-air pistol and aimed at the cliff-face over a hundred feet above Motormaster.

A blast of air packing a punch of forty thousand pounds per square inch hit the cliff, fragmenting it into a spray of boulders. Instantly Drag Strip fired as well, increasing the gravity of the chunks of rock so that they dropped like meteors. Dead End thought he heard metal crunch, but the sound was lost under the thunder as the rocks rained down on Motormaster, hiding him from view, building up into a cairn that weighed more tons than even Menasor could have lifted. The roar of it echoed in his audials.

"Autobots in visual range," Breakdown warned. He was already in alt-mode.

Drag Strip's mouth twisted. "Rust in peace," he said softly. The Autobots increased their speed as Wildrider subspaced his gun and transformed as well; Dead End was last. "I'll bring up the rear," he said over the radio. "Go on!"

Like a yellow bullet, Drag Strip tore off with the rest of them just behind; despite their injuries and weariness, the tiny shapes of the Autobots in the distance finally vanished into a cloud of dust kicked up by rapidly spinning tires. None of the Stunticons spoke for nearly an hour, though, and Wildrider didn't even turn his radio on. Eventually there was an incoming transmission from Breakdown, over the common channel.

"_It's done, right?"_ he said tentatively.

Dead End checked his combat radar, but they were out of range; Motormaster wouldn't have shown up on it whether he'd been deactivated or not. _Only one way to find out,_ he thought.

Part of him dreaded it, but most of him was too tired to care. He let his mind sink into the gestalt bond, then reached to Motormaster.

"_Dead End, what--"_

"_What the frag are you _doing_?"_

Dead End ignored the chatter on the comm. He had never before used their gestalt connection to link to Motormaster; when he wanted the Stunticon leader's attention (_ex-Stunticon leader's attention_) he simply used the radio. Now, though, a deeper call went out, powerful and unbreakable. It searched for Motormaster, for the gestalt core, for Menasor's body, for their strength and their cruelty and the part of them that no longer meshed with the whole…

…and found nothing.

Emptiness. Blankness. Space and white noise.

Dead End pulled himself out of the link with an effort, but he felt a little better. A fraction less exhausted, which was good, because Megatron wasn't an easy mech to lie to. He opened the comm line again.

"_You…"_ Breakdown had sensed it too. "_You tried to find him."_

"_There was nothing to be found_," Dead End replied, and increased his speed. "_Let's go home_."

* * *

**demonicSuperCow** : Considering the, uh, outpouring of support for Motormaster, this story's going to be a lot of fun to write. Appreciate your feedback. :)

**Niveas **: I'd say Motormaster's way of thinking is that while he might punish his troops when they deserve it, he _would_ pull them out of a ditch. Single-handed if he had to. And then slap 'em with the other hand for falling in. But he'd still pull them out.

**Fire From Above, Tugera, tomorrow4eva, Nightwind** : Thanks for your reviews! Hope you enjoy the rest of the story.

**Taipan Kiryu**: Dead End gets his chance to shine in this one. And as you said, the story called for a somber point of view. At least this is one protagonist who knows he's doomed even before the writer sets events into motion so that he _is._

I imagine Motormaster just leaves them all alone after a victory (and is, predictably, excluded from whatever they do to celebrate). Maybe given the choice between having nothing to do with his team and beating the slag out of them, he prefers the latter – at least that way he gets their attention. Anything is better than being ignored.

Poor Wildrider, he's not going to be treated very well in this story. By anyone. And yes, that's exactly what the Aerialbots are thinking: that if their leader's down then by Primus, so is the boss of the other team. Oddly enough, I don't think the Stunticons would simply have stood by and let them kill Motormaster, though. That's for the Stunticons to do.


	3. King Hereafter

**Chapter 3 : King Hereafter**

_Third Witch : All hail, Macbeth! Thou shalt be king hereafter! _

_Macbeth, Act I, Scene III_

_

* * *

_"Dead End to Soundwave. We're approaching. Please raise the docking tower."

There was a slight pause. "Motormaster's status?"

The remaining Stunticons had already decided that one of them would have to explain the situation to Megatron while the others focused on keeping their thoughts and emotions under tight control, all the more necessary when Soundwave was anywhere in the vicinity. "Think of the Aerialbots or the raid," Breakdown had suggested. "And only one of us should do the talking."

"Dead End," Wildrider and Drag Strip had said simultaneously. Dead End sighed. _Now the worst of Megatron's wrath will be directed at me. Reminder to self: stay at the center of the blast radius._

Still, at least he could reply with no discernible emotion except for an ever-present depression. "The Aerialbots made a sneak attack on us and Motormaster was deactivated."

The pause was a few seconds longer that time. "Report to control room," Soundwave said and cut the connection.

Moments later the ocean boiled in the distance as the docking tower rose, and Dead End briefly contemplated stopping power to his thrusters and antigrav. He would drop into the water and sink all the way to the ocean floor, where it would probably be quiet and peaceful. Still, deactivation would be a long-drawn-out process – he was a fatalist, not a masochist – and the saltwater would do unlovely things to his paintjob.

The landing platform opened, then closed behind them. For once there was an unspoken agreement to walk to the control room rather than racing there in alt-mode as they usually did. Not only were they low on fuel as well after the flight, but Dead End supposed a normal gestalt would (at the very least) be shocked and subdued if its leader was suddenly killed. It was a pity that they'd never seen that happen to any other conbiner team before; that might have given them some clue as to how to behave.

The doors of the control room hissed open. In his peripheral vision, Dead End saw Breakdown trembling, but that was normal. Megatron was in his chair, Soundwave at the comm, Starscream monitoring something else at another station. Breakdown wasn't comfortable around ordinary 'cons, let alone High Command. Wildrider's silence was less ordinary, but hopefully that would be put down to Motormaster's sudden death.

_Drag Strip's the weak link, _he thought, then clamped down on both his mind and the gestalt bond with a determined effort. Soundwave gave no indication that he had even noticed their presence, but Dead End knew that the telepath was aware of far more than he let on.

Megatron rose from his chair, his optics smoldering. Belatedly, Dead End saluted. He wasn't sure if that made a difference, but it seemed like the thing to do.

Starscream's grin was wide. "So, mighty Megatron, your gestalt seems to be… missing a piece. My recommendation to send the Seekers to engage the Aerialbots--"

"Silence!" Megatron snapped. His optics burned like lasers, and Dead End met that livid gaze with an effort. Breakdown and Drag Strip were staring at the floor, while Wildrider looked at something in the distance – a rivet in a panel of the wall, apparently. "Report."

Not a good sign if Megatron was so terse, but better than him being calm and pleasant; Dead End knew that that was when the Decepticon leader was at his most manipulative. But he had never needed to manipulate the Stunticons before. _We obeyed as we were commanded. Most of the time, anyway._

Briefly he described what had happened. His radar had been knocked offline in the battle, so he hadn't seen the Aerialbots until they'd plummeted down from the sky, targeting Motormaster because he'd been in the lead. The semi had plunged off the road, and Aerialbot fire had buried him under tons of rock.

"We received no response on either our radios or the gestalt link," he concluded, wondering if the dull steady recitation sounded right. _You can't con a 'con,_ as the saying went, and Dead End was quickly learning that when he lied, nothing he said sounded believable to him, so he certainly wasn't sure whether it sounded believable to Megatron. Who had probably confronted – and deactivated – plenty of liars and backstabbers in his time.

Megatron studied him for a moment longer before the furnace-hot gaze moved to the other Stunticons. "Breakdown!" Breakdown jolted as if Megatron had hit him. "Is that what occurred during your retreat?"

"Yes sir," Breakdown whispered. He'd managed to raise his optics from the floor, but couldn't look any higher than Megatron's knee-joints. The only good thing so far, Dead End thought, was that they weren't staring down the barrel of a fusion cannon. _Though that's going to happen any minute now._

When Megatron next spoke, his voice was softer, the same way quicksand was softer than concrete. "And how did you get that dent on your face?"

_We're finished._ _All of us_. Dead End had never believed in a life after death, and for that he was grateful. He had a mental image of them being blasted into a multicolored pool of molten metal on the floor, only to find that some still-surviving part of them was hurled into a hellish afterlife where Motormaster was waiting to exact revenge.

"I – I was disciplined. Sir."

That was normal enough in their team, so Dead End hoped Megatron wouldn't take it as the incident which precipitated Motormaster's disappearance. _It's just a routine way to deal with a mistake, Megatron,_ he thought. _Nothing to pay any attention to. You've done worse to Starscream. For that matter, you did worse to Motormaster once._

_Don't think about Motormaster._

"Strange that the Aerialbots' attack deactivated the strongest of you rather than the weakest," Starscream put in.

The Air Commander had never liked them – perhaps it was the fact that they had been created by Megatron's own hand. Or maybe it had something to do with Menasor making sure Starscream had had the shortest reign in all of Decepticon history. Dead End had an answer for that, though. "We took their leader down during the battle," he said. "I assume they targeted Motormaster in retaliation for that."

"Wildrider." Megatron turned, and Wildrider's gaze slid slowly to his. "Was it not possible for you to retrieve Motormaster's remains?"

"Nope."

At least that sounded like Wildrider, though for once Megatron didn't insist on the proper formality when addressing him. "Then why did you not remain with his corpse?"

_That's what the Combaticons would have done if Onslaught had fallen in battle,_ Dead End thought with a sickening feeling of leaden weight in his internal components. _They'd have brought him back somehow, to have his remains interred in the Crypt. I never thought of that. And if Scrapper had died… you wouldn't have been able to drag the Constructicons away from his grave. _

"There were Autobots after us." Wildrider was an unconvincing liar, and Dead End could only hope the flatness of his voice would be put down to the pain of losing his leader. _We're in shock. We were all, uh, so fond of Motormaster, you see. We need some time and privacy before we're back to our old selves._

"We couldn't have stayed there," Drag Strip said. "They'd have deactivated us too--"

"When I want you to speak, you'll be informed." Megatron's voice snapped out like an energy-whip, and Drag Strip was silent at once. After a long moment, Megatron seated himself again, watching them.

Dead End glanced at his diagnostics. He had turned off his internal fans, mostly because he didn't need them activating during the interrogation and making Megatron think he was unnerved or afraid, but his core temperature had risen as a result. Half his systems were now flashing warnings at him. Unable to do anything about it, he concentrated on standing still and silent.

"Soundwave," Megatron said without looking away from the Stunticons. "Comm Motormaster."

"Response: none."

"Then send Buzzsaw and the Constructicons out to find him – or his remains. Take the coordinates from Dead End." Megatron's optics narrowed. "We may still be able to salvage Motormaster, if his processors and personality component haven't been too badly damaged. It's strange that any gestalt would be so functional after its leader's death, so there's a chance he might not have been permanently destroyed."

"Strange for a normal team, perhaps," Starscream said. "But one composed of psychotics and neurotics--"

"Better than traitors." Megatron's voice was a low dangerous purr, and Dead End wasn't certain if that was directed at them or at Starscream. Probably Starscream, judging by the speed with which the Air Commander returned to his work, but he wasn't going to break out the energon just yet. Megatron didn't trust them; that much was evident. And when the Constructicons dug up Motormaster's chassis… he would just have to hope that every injury still visible looked as though it might have been caused by Aerialbots.

He transmitted the coordinates to Soundwave, who received them without a word of acknowledgment and ejected the gold condor. The room was silent except for the low hum of engines and other equipment, the occasional click or beep from the computers and an annoying, repeated clank that was Starscream tapping one foot on the floor.

"Dismissed," Megatron said finally. "Go to the medical bay. You'll be sent for once the Constructicons report back to me. And you are all on half-rations for the next two cycles."

Dead End tried to nod and salute at the same time, which he realized half a second later looked stupid. Half-rations weren't unexpected; with the miserable failure of the raid, their supplies would be low. He wished Megatron would allow them to leave the ship; they could always raid a gas station for fuel, and just being outside would make them all feel better.

He could only hope that they _would_ be allowed to leave again, eventually.

"Who's going to be in the medbay if the Constructicons went to get… you know?" Breakdown said as they drove through the corridors, for once not going at their usual speed. Drag Strip didn't even try to use the ceiling as an extra lane to cut in front of Wildrider.

"Hook, who else?" Dead End said. It turned out to be both Hook and Mixmaster, the former in none too good a mood at being left to deal with four Stunticons and the latter intensely curious about the news that was flying through the ship.

"I heard Optimus Prime deactivated Motormaster," he said, handing Hook surgical tools one by one.

"Nah," Wildrider said. "I shot him."

Dead End froze, but Hook only shook his head. "CPU damage again. Well, I'm not repairing that. I could, but what good will it do when the personality component will be affected as well? I told Scrapper, it all has to be rebuilt from the ground up…" He kept grumbling as he continued to work, mending Breakdown's jaw, replacing the ruined armor panel on Wildrider's arm and welding the laser burns Drag Strip had taken during the raid. Mixmaster giggled and repeated a joke that Bonecrusher had told him over the radio, but then fell silent. "That's odd," he said after a while.

"What is it?" Drag Strip said tensely. Dead End guessed the other Constructicons were reporting on the condition of Motormaster's deactivated frame.

Mixmaster patted Drag Strip on the helm. "I'm sure Megatron'll tell you if he wants you to know." He and Hook exchanged glances – the wordless, instinctive communication of the Constructicons very much in evidence – and Dead End could tell that Drag Strip was seething. He tried to send out some reassurance over their own gestalt link, but since he had no practice in reassuring anyone except Breakdown, it didn't seem to have any effect.

The Constructicons said very little after that, and they finished with him quickly. Dead End got up, but felt reluctant to leave. He felt relatively safe in the med-bay – Hook was in charge there, and didn't like careful repairs being undone by discipline. But he couldn't stay there. The other Stunticons were already at the door, and when he joined them, they drove in silence to their common room.

For once Wildrider didn't turn on the television, and no one spoke – perhaps from fear of Soundwave's cameras, perhaps from exhaustion, more likely a combination of both. Dead End leaned against the door and tried not to think. It was too late for recriminations and regrets and what-ifs; all he could do now was brace for whatever Megatron did to them.

His radio pinged. _Soundwave._ "Yes?"

"Lord Megatron requires your presence. Alone."

The other Stunticons were watching him with fear-filled optics. "Megatron," Dead End said as he pushed himself away from the door, and the one word was answer enough. He supposed Megatron had asked to see him alone to isolate him from the rest of his team and question him with whatever evidence Motormaster's remains had provided.

Breakdown said something as Dead End walked out, but he didn't hear; he fought to hold on to his usual indifference as he drove to the control room. A low fuel warning flashed up and he remembered the half-rations. _Doesn't matter now, not when I'm going to be deactivated myself at any minute. _A gestalt which turned on its own leader would be seen as dangerously unstable, and even if Megatron didn't kill them, there would be no place for them in the army.

The doors slid open and he entered. Starscream had gone by then, Ramjet taking his place at the terminal. _Terminal, that's another word for "fatal"_. Dead End caught himself abruptly; he could _not_ afford to go the Wildrider route and be distracted by anything. _Concentrate. Salute. Talk._

"My lord?" he said.

Megatron turned from the screen he was looking at. "Do you know what the Constructicons found?" he said.

Dead End felt as though he had swallowed liquid nitrogen. "No, my lord," he managed to say.

"Nothing."

_I didn't hear that right._ "I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. They didn't find Motormaster's remains."

"He…" Dead End was grateful – not for the first time – that a visor and mask hid most of his facial expressions from everyone. "He was deactivated, my lord." _Of course. This is a trick. He knows, somehow, and he's setting me up to see how I respond. _

"Oh, I believe that," Megatron said with a dismissive wave of one hand – the less dangerous one. "Skid patterns, scrapes of paint, missile damage – it was easy to see how the ambush happened. But they didn't find Motormaster's chassis. The Autobots may have stolen it."

Dead End said nothing. The Autobots were a convenient scapegoat, and he certainly wasn't about to disillusion Megatron; the Stunticons had taken the blame more than once for damage they hadn't caused. He only hoped Megatron wouldn't think that they had all collaborated to cook up a story to cover Motormaster's defection. _No, that's paranoid_. _And Megatron knows how loyal Motormaster is – was. _

"But since we cannot reach him on the radio and you cannot sense him through your link…" Megatron's face hardened, and his voice took on a coldly formal note. "Motormaster has given his life to our cause. We cannot give him the place he deserves in the Crypt or a laying-to-rest befitting of a Decepticon warrior. But we will never forget his service and his allegiance, and his memorial will be the corpses of our enemies piled high. Those will not be difficult for anyone to find."

_Motormaster would love – would have loved that._ "Yes, my lord."

Megatron regarded him with a red gaze as searching as a spotlight. "There are some who would say that the loss of a gestalt leader leaves the team unfit for duty, but I see no evidence that this is the case for my Stunticons. I am aware that Vector Sigma gave some of you certain… difficulties that the rest of us do not share, but it seems you also have more resilience than I expected."

To say _Yes, my lord_ again would have sounded like parroting the words, so Dead End only dipped his head in acknowledgement. "I am pleased to hear that, my lord," he said, hoping Ramjet wouldn't point out how far from pleased he sounded.

Megatron finally seemed to be getting to the point. "So the Stunticons will continue to serve in the ranks of my army." Dead End would have sagged in relief if not for the control he kept struggling to assert over his frame. "And you will be their new leader."

"What?" Dead End only realized how that sounded after he had said it. "I mean…" He groped for the good manners that he had thought were instinctive to him. "This is a great honor, my lord."

"Then accept it," Megatron said dryly.

"Are – are you certain that I would be the best choice for the leader of the Stunticons?"

_Primus, _he thought. _I just suggested that he could be wrong about choosing among his subordinates. That is _not_ the kind of thing to be said to Megatron._ But he realized a moment later that Megatron was staring at him in perplexity and annoyance rather than anger.

"You are the _only_ choice as leader of the Stunticons!" he said. "Whom would you recommend instead? Breakdown? Wildrider?"

Soundwave turned slightly. "Drag Strip: only Stunticon who desires leadership."

Megatron's lip curled. "And who would let it go to his head like a tankful of high-grade. Besides, he can't control the rest of them, much less be responsible for them."

_And I _can_?_ Dead End thought. But he knew Megatron was right. There was really no other choice short of putting some other 'con in charge, and no gestalt team (or even a former gestalt team) would take orders from someone who wasn't one of them, intimately and intrinsically linked to them.

_Besides, what argument can I make against it? That I don't want to take the responsibility for my team? Oh, that will be_ just_ what Megatron wants to hear after the failure of the raid and Motormaster's death. He'll probably pound some leadership skills into me with the side of his cannon_.

The sense of disaster looming over him hadn't lifted; instead, it grew worse. Dead End knew he would take the blame for whatever the Stunticons did from then on; he had to defend them and discipline them and deal with the consequences of their actions. He had been aware that things would change from the moment Motormaster had… gone, and this was one of the things that had changed, so he had no choice but to deal with it.

"Thank you, Lord Megatron," he said. "I accept the honor."

"Good," Megatron said. "I will make a shipwide announcement in five breem. That will give you time to inform your subordinates first, if you choose." _Subordinates,_ Dead End thought. _They used to be teammates._ "A schedule of your new duties will be sent to your personal terminal. You may also use the quarters formerly assigned to Motormaster. I understand they're more spacious."

"Thank you," Dead End said again, though he thought that he would have to be deactivated himself before he moved into Motormaster's room. There was nothing aesthetically wrong with it – contrary to a rumor he had heard, Motormaster did not decorate his quarters with whipping racks and straphoists. But each time Dead End had had to enter that room, he'd done so braced for pain of some kind, and he had seldom been disappointed.

"I am not pleased about the loss of Menasor, though," Megatron said. "Your second duty as the Stunticon leader, Dead End, is to mitigate that setback. Your first is to ensure that your troops perform to a better standard than they did previously. Failing to defend one's leader from an enemy attack is not a weakness I wish to see again in anyone under my command. Have I made myself understood?"

"Yes, my lord." Dead End wondered just how he was supposed to make up for the loss of Menasor – destroy a gestalt component of the Aerialbots or Protectobots as well? It didn't matter, though. Not only was he too tired to care, but coming up with ideas was one duty that could be safely handed over to Breakdown.

"Dismissed," Megatron said, and so Dead End took his leave, trying not to meet the gazes of any 'cons he passed on the way back to his own room. He guessed the other Stunticons were still waiting in the common room, but he didn't want to meet them either, at least not until he was sure how he felt about being their leader. That had been a completely unexpected consequence of… of what they had done.

_Interesting fact, though, that Drag Strip would like to lead the team himself._ He made a mental note of that. Just for future reference.

The shipwide announcement went out. Dead End stretched out on his berth, tired down to his core and remembered that he still hadn't had any energon. He didn't really want to move, though, much less go down to the commissary. He just wanted to lie there and recharge and forget about everything.

There was a tap at the door. _Here it comes,_ Dead End thought, and gave the command to open. He had expected to see the other three Stunticons there, but it was only Breakdown.

"Hey." Breakdown came in, and the door closed behind him. "You okay?"

"I suppose so. Where are Wildrider and Drag Strip?" That wasn't something he would have thought about before, but now things were different.

"Watching a movie." Breakdown sat down on the end of the berth.

Dead End watched him carefully. "So it doesn't make a difference that I'm the leader now?"

"Not really. Unless you want us to salute or something when we see you." Breakdown smiled a little, then spoke more quietly. "I'm happy about it, Dead End. Anything would be an impediment over what we had before."

"Improvement," Dead End said automatically. "Well, that's good then." He let his head fall back; obviously they didn't know about Motormaster's remains being missing. _I'll have to tell them._ The Stunticons didn't have too many secrets from each other. _After they've had some time to refuel and recharge._

_And then we can think about what that means. _

"You haven't had any energon, have you?" Breakdown was looking at him worriedly.

"I didn't feel like going all that way, to tell you the truth." Dead End put an arm across his face to keep the light out of his optics. "I'll just rest a little first."

"I'll go and get your share. I've already had mine."

"Well, if you really don't mind. Half-rations, of course. Starvation."

Breakdown got up. "Anything else you need?"

Dead End considered. "Some repainting, I think. I've got paint here, but I'll need stripper from the stores."

"Okay, I'll get that."

"And my can of gloss guard. Wildrider borrowed it again."

"Sure."

"Maybe a new chamois as well, if it's not too much trouble. And one of your magazines? The one with the amusing article about Starscream would be a distraction. And a fresh can of brake fluid. I need a top-up."

"Right." Breakdown waited expectantly.

"Nothing more for now. Thank you, Breakdown."

* * *

**Fire From Above** : Thanks for reminding me about Wildrider's option of running off to find Geri, who would have acted as a stabilizing element to him and helped him get through all this. I'll make sure that doesn't happen.

**Taipan Kiryu** : The story was inspired by _Macbeth_, so I'm glad it made you think of Shakespeare. :)

The Stunticons can always surprise me. When I first started writing about them, I didn't think they could be so fascinating as characters, and I definitely didn't think I could get so much out of Motormaster. What's there to be said about him except that he's their sadistic, dominating leader? But getting deep into his head shows more of him, and his journey through this story is turning out to be more complex than I expected…

I don't think Drag Strip would have brought up the incident (of him taking the blame for Wildrider's misdeeds) if he hadn't felt pushed to the edge. Wildrider might be crazy and amoral, but he's also affectionate and loyal, and those qualities are too valuable to be put under pressure by reminding him of an old mistake and using it against him.

You're right, the Stunticons (all of them) have got themselves into far more of a problem than they realize or can cope with. In the past, no matter what happened to them, their team was intact; in their worst moments, calling for help from Motormaster was always an option. But now? And their status among the Decepticons is on shaky ground as well, something that will become abundantly clear to them very soon. Things are only going downhill from here.

**tomorrow4eva **: Yes, there's a reason for the bond finding white noise… though that won't last for long. Thanks for your review!

**Guardian** : Motormaster got shot by Galvatron in "Five Faces of Darkness" and he still seemed okay, so yeah, I think he'll return too. ;)


	4. Out of the Depths

**Chapter 4 : Out of the Depths**

"_Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord." -- Psalms 130:1_

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* * *

  
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As all Decepticon warriors were trained to do, Motormaster didn't give any sign that he had come back online. Though that was also because he thought he would break apart if he spoke, much less moved. He could tell he was lying at an angle, still in alt-mode, so the energon was still safe for the moment. And from the rocks surrounding him, he could tell he had plunged right off the road.

On closer inspection, though, the damage was more painful than incapacitating. One of his front tires had burst, but he had a spare. His forcefield had gone down after the first missile strike, but he wasn't too worried; that was a temporary flicker rather than a shutdown and self-repairs were already taking care of it.

His hood and grille had taken the brunt of the gravity-enhanced impact with the bottom of the ravine, and since they were heavily reinforced and designed to withstand high-speed impacts with concrete, nothing was broken internally except for his radiator. Motormaster snarled under his breath. _No more driving in that condition, not unless I want engine burnout. _

His diagnostic queue done with in seconds, he turned his attention to his surroundings, still giving no indication that he was online in case his enemies were observing. _Wretched little jumped-up wannabe Seekers is all they are._ He made a mental note to corner the red Phantom later and rip its wings off – slowly.

There were nothing to be heard except for the wind between the walls of the shallow canyon, and the distant hum of engines. _Battle's over, then,_ Motormaster thought in mingled relief and disappointment. If not for the energon cubes, he could have given the order to merge. Frag, if not for the energon cubes, he could have dealt with all the Aerialbots himself.

His distal optical sensors seemed to have been damaged by the impact as well, because they weren't working, but it didn't matter; with the battle over, all that could be repaired once they were back home. He started to open a comm link to the other Stunticons.

Something made him stop an instant before he could do so, a strange niggling intuition at the back of his mind. He paused, puzzled, and searched for the source of doubt. It came from the gestalt link.

Motormaster didn't rely on that connection, mostly because he didn't need to gauge the other Stunticons' states of mind or stay attuned to them. He also didn't go in for slag like reassuring them; as far as he was concerned, his subordinates were fighters he had to command, not touchy-feely friends he had to get along with.

And he was adept at blocking his side of the gestalt bond whenever he disciplined his team. But since he had been offline, his control over the link had slipped, so he sensed what the rest of them felt. Fear and hostility on the surface, thick as oil, but like that oil the emotions floated on something deeper, a growing conviction that drew them together.

For a moment Motormaster was distracted from the pain; it felt to him as though the other Stunticons were preparing for battle again, bracing against some common threat, and yet he couldn't hear the sounds of Aerialbots flying overhead. Ground troops, then, more Autobots? No, why would his team be so quiet if that were the case? He doubted they were lying in wait, trying to pull off an ambush; there weren't any hiding places on the highway and the evidence of their battle would be seen far and wide. Besides, they would show up on the Autobots' radar.

His own engine had been jarred in the fall and was turned off, ticking softly as it cooled. Without the rumble of that, it might be easier to hear what was going on. He dialed his audials up to maximum reception, with the result that when a pebble tumbled nearby it sounded like a gun going off beside his head.

"…don't have any time left," he heard Drag Strip say.

_Time for what? What's going on?_ Again Motormaster thought of simply comming them, but the fear in the gestalt link was thickening to terror, and his own confusion grew. What were they so worried about? It couldn't be him – he knew the other Stunticons were afraid of him and hated him, not necessarily in that order, but that was a healthy fear. It kept them in their place and made them jump to obey his orders despite all their failings and weaknesses.

And it had never been this bad, even when he disciplined them. His team all knew that while he was perfectly capable of beating the slag out of them and enjoying it, he wouldn't actually kill them. Nor would he let anyone else lay a hand on them. That balanced it out – as far as Motormaster was concerned, anyway.

There was an exchange between Drag Strip and Dead End that was too quiet for him to hear, but then Drag Strip spoke a little more loudly. "Not much this can do other than making the bastard heavier than he already is. Wildrider?"

_Arrogant little grease-stain,_ Motormaster thought. He could tell when he was being talked about. Well, once he got out of there he would teach Drag Strip a lesson in being more respectful – and possibly not wasting time when one's leader was lying at the foot of a ravine with the only spoils of a raid. For a moment he wondered if they were discussing how to rescue him, but why would that make them so afraid?

He heard the snap of a trigger an instant before the lasers hit him. Two tires burst simultaneously. With his audials dialed up, the sound was like two grenades going off and the shock made him jerk, even in alt-mode. In all his life he had never fired on one of his team.

Immediately his sensors registered the heat of the lasers striking his trailer.

The Stunticons had been built by Megatron himself, with Motormaster being the toughest of a very tough team. Even without his forcefield he was armored and shielded, intended to shrug off enemy fire. When he transformed, he folded over backwards, so his cab – which would be first to take the force of an impact – was made of what would be his feet in root-mode. His processors and laser-core stayed under the bulk of the trailer.

He thought of the energon in the trailer, but realized a moment later that Wildrider's laser wasn't cutting through the reinforced metal. Parts of his trailer were melting instead, running like hot acid down his sides and the back of the trailer. He fought not to make a sound. He could have bellowed up at Wildrider to stop, he could have commed him with a threat, he could have twisted and struggled to try to get away…

…but what if the rest of them started shooting too? If Wildrider just ignored him? Motormaster knew that the lunatic would never have acted alone; Wildrider was insane and an idiot on top of that, but treachery was beyond him.

_That's Drag Strip's specialty,_ Motormaster thought, trying to control his fury. _There's a Starscream in every team, and he's it. But once I get out of here, I'll make him a good example for the rest of them. And maybe make him a good drone, too._

The searing burn abruptly stopped, leaving Motormaster relieved despite the raw wounds on his trailer. _Now what? Maybe they just wanted to attack me while I was offline, vent some exhaust… they must've thought I'd suspect the Autobots. Still a cowardly, treacherous thing to do, but they'll never do it again once I get my hands on them. _

And at least Dead End and Breakdown seemed to be a little less suicidal. Grimly, Motormaster thought that there was nothing like some apparently crippling injury to show you where your subordinates' loyalties lay. As soon as he could be certain the moment of sedition had passed he would--

The lasers hit him again, bursting two more tires. Motormaster bit down on a grunt of pain, then turned his audials back to normal; his processors throbbed with the afterechoes of the sound. Open wounds were heat-cauterized, then reopened. _What the frag do they think they're doing?_ he thought in a fury. _Are they trying to _melt_ me down? Is Wildrider_ that _crazy? I'll bash his head flat, since he's not using it for anything--_

"The cliff," he heard Drag Strip say. "Bury the fragger. Dead End?"

_They're all in it. My entire team turned against me. And what the slag does he mean, the cliff?_

He heard the muffled _whump_ of Dead End's compressed-air gun going off and he knew what Drag Strip had meant even before the rocks cracked, high above him. In that moment, he knew that his team hadn't just turned against him, didn't just want to hurt him.

They were trying to kill him.

Motormaster's hulking size often made mechs who didn't know him think he was the slow and stupid type. The "slow" part amused him because no Stunticon was _slow_, at least not in alt-mode, but he knew very well that he wasn't on par with some of his subordinates when it came to thinking. He didn't have Wildrider's mental problems, thank Megatron, or Drag Strip's less obvious weakness. On the other hand, he didn't know half of the big words that Dead End tossed around and he didn't have Breakdown's odd way of being able to think his way out of problems that couldn't be beaten into submission.

But he still reacted with the speed of instinct when his life was threatened. His forcefield came back online – weak and flickering – as he fired both of his forward-mounted guns. The rocks beneath him exploded.

He didn't think the other Stunticons had heard that through the thunder of falling boulders, but it was too late if they had. Red-hot fragments of stone struck his grille and cracked his windshield, but he was already tilting into the gaping pit he had just excavated. Then the rocks crashed down.

Motormaster's forcefield absorbed the initial impact and went down too. He heard metal – weakened by Wildrider's lasers – crush like tinfoil. Then he was toppling, falling forward. _I'm not going to die,_ was the last thing he thought, _not until I kill them. All of them._

The world went black.

* * *

****

Onslaught considered problems logically, in an "If A, then B" way.

_If Motormaster was deactivated but his remains were not found, there are two possibilities. The first is that his remains were left in such a state that the Constructicons either did not recognize them or could not otherwise gather them_.

That made little sense, though. It wasn't as though Motormaster had been melted down for paper clips, or pulverized to the point where his remains were dust on the wind. _Very well._ _The second possibility is that the Autobots removed his remains before the Constructicons arrived on the scene._

That dissatisfied him too. The Autobots had the means and opportunity, certainly, but no motive. Onslaught had lived more than seventy thousand vorn but had yet to hear of Autobots stealing Decepticon corpses when there were 'cons nearby – and in this case, no less than gestalt-mates – who would want to lay the remains to rest. And who would be even more brutal to anyone who desecrated the remains of fallen comrades. Judging by what he knew of Optimus Prime, Onslaught didn't think the Autobot leader would allow that.

Besides, it wasn't likely that the Autobots had had enough time to dig Motormaster's remains out, drag them away _and_ replace all the rocks to make it look as though they hadn't interfered. So Onslaught discarded that possibility too.

_If Motormaster was deactivated, then his remains should have been found. That's reasonable. So if we found nothing… then he wasn't deactivated._

The Combaticons had small private rooms on the _Nemesis_, but like each gestalt team they had been assigned a common room as well. Onslaught had made sure it was stocked with computers and wired to every network of significance. Unlike the late unlamented Motormaster, he didn't plan on his team getting together to waste their time watching television. When they gathered in the Decepticon base, where Soundwave spied on them and where Megatron could walk in at any moment, his troops _worked_.

(Of course, the other Combaticons did Primus-knew-what in their own land base and whenever they took off in their spare time, but that was different)

So now Onslaught leaned back in the chair at the center of their common room and continued to think. _If Motormaster wasn't deactivated, he's still alive. If he's still alive, he's somewhere on land._ Onslaught seriously doubted a huge tractor-trailer could hide in the _Nemesis_ for long, and he couldn't see any reason why Motormaster would do so.

Still, it might not be a bad idea to have Brawl do a quick patrol of the lower decks, just in case, and that would give Brawl something to do while the rest of them were busy. He sent out a radio transmission with his orders, and waited for the other Combaticons to join him. Blast-Off was on duty, but Swindle and Vortex reported in and said that they were on their way.

_If Motormaster is somewhere on land, then we should be able to find him. The Stunticons might claim that he was deactivated, but none of them are exactly sane, so it's possible they're wrong._ _And considering they're still functional rather than reeling with the effects of a broken gestalt link, the evidence does seem to point to Motormaster's continued existence._

Swindle and Vortex came in, laughing at some joke, though they quickly lost the amusement when Onslaught told them what their assignments were. They set to work, though. Also unlike his Stunticon counterpart, Onslaught didn't hit his troops. He had no need to – they obeyed him out of a discipline forged through thousands of vorn spent together, and in return, he turned a deaf audial when they occasionally paused in their work to whisper or giggle together.

He knew the Stunticons would not have felt that much at ease in Motormaster's presence, and that was one more piece in the increasingly suspicious picture.

Finally, after nearly a joor, Swindle shook his head and turned away from the terminal. "No reports at all, Onslaught," he said. "I've checked news sources in two entire continents."

"I did two as well," put in Vortex.

"Yeah, the little ones!" Swindle said. "No mention of Motormaster. There were nearly a hundred reports of damage or injuries or fatalities caused by trucks, but either the trucks don't match his description or the drivers of the trucks were seen or apprehended."

Onslaught nodded in acknowledgement. "You'll repeat and broaden the search next cycle."

"What?" Vortex got up. "Onslaught, you want to find Motormaster, just let me question one of the Stunticons. I'm telling you, they know more than they're letting on. And with Motormaster gone, it's not like anyone will--"

"Not yet, Vortex," Onslaught said, thinking. Even the absence of evidence could be used to draw a conclusion. _If Motormaster's alive and on land, but somehow managing not to attract any human attention, there are two possibilities. Either he's in stasis lock somewhere, which still makes the other Stunticons liars for claiming he's been deactivated. Or he's very much online, and staying hidden._

Either possibility was intriguing… and had potential.

One of Onslaught's deepest grievances was that each time his team seemed to be achieving some prominence among the Decepticons, the floorplates were snatched away from under their feet. First they had allied with Starscream, only to have Menasor incapacitate them with a lucky punch. Then there had been the attempted takeover of Cybertron, which had not ended too well either. Though at least there, they had faced Optimus Prime and Megatron, both worthy adversaries. Losing to a gang of misfits and idiots was far more embarassing, but if he could prove they had lied to Megatron….

"We will find out what the other Stunticons know," he said. "But we will not charge in blindly. Nor, Vortex, will we separate one of them from the rest so you can work on him."

"But--"

"We'll make them do that for us."

* * *

****

Motormaster came back online, instinctively tried to move away from whatever was slowly crushing him to death and realized that he couldn't do it.

Everything hurt, from burst tires to half-melted armor to overheated engine, and the rocks piled over his crumpled trailer felt like a giant stone foot pressing him down. He couldn't see anything except for all the damage warnings flashing up on his diagnostic queue. He was trapped and alone and too badly injured.

_Frag it and frag them all too! I'm not going down so easily._

The thought was a bitter growl, and for a moment his hate overrode even the pain that seemed to go deeper than his laser-core. That was enough time for him to activate every other sensor and send out a short radar pulse. Tons of rock lying on his trailer, pinning him down, but there was nothing beneath his front wheels. His cab was free. He lay half in and half out of the hole he had blasted into the side of the ravine.

And that was odd… even though his radar was weak compared to Dead End's (_going to rip off his armor plate by plate so he stays conscious but not looking so pretty_), it registered open space just ahead. In a mountain? For a moment Motormaster thought he was dying; that had to be a hallucination. He'd expected that last desperate firing of his lasers to blast enough of a hole in the cliff to fit part of his alt-mode at best, to preserve his CPU. The thought of Megatron retrieving that after his death and making his treacherous troops pay for what they had done was quite pleasant.

What he hadn't expected was for his lasers to blow away what was apparently a thinner wall of rock separating him from a cave. No, not a cave… it was more like the bottom of a well that sloped upwards at an angle. On an impulse, Motormaster checked his maps.

A mine. Abandoned for decades now, but it was a mine, with one shaft drilled almost to the level of the ravine. If he could just pull free of the rockfall…

He gunned his engine. With his radiator leaking, his core temperature immediately rose. He ignored that, overrode safety cutoffs and limiters, forced every last ounce of horsepower out of the battered motor. _Not going to stay here and die, slag it!_ Gears ground together agonizingly, and his olfactory sensors picked up the stench of overheated metal, but his front tires touched the smooth slope of rock ahead of him.

Motormaster's ventilations came out as snarls. He had to get free somehow, and yet with his rear tires burst from Wildrider's (_going to tear out his spinal relays so he can't move, then make him watch while I kill the rest of them_) gun, he had no leverage. If he could only get his rear half free from the rockfall, he could drive up the shaft; it sloped upwards at an easy forty-five degree angle. If he could only move forward five feet. That was all the distance between him and the shaft leading up into the mine, all the distance between him and his continued existence.

He couldn't do it. The snarls turned into groans of pain. His core temperature spiked, his entire frame shuddering with the effort, and the energon cubes shifted in his trailer.

_The cubes!_

Motormaster slid his trailer doors open a fraction, trembling – he couldn't open the doors any further, but that was all he needed. One of the cubes fell out, clinking against piled rock. He closed the trailer again.

All the Stunticons had forward-mounted weapons, but only Motormaster's guns swiveled, a necessary modification on an alt-mode which would never be as quick to turn and maneuver and spin as those of his (_soon to be dead_) subordinates. He turned both guns as far back as he could, almost a hundred and eighty degrees, and snapped off two shots.

One of them blew a hole through another of his tires. The other struck the cube of energon.

The explosion disintegrated his rear bumper and blasted the rocks around his tires to powder. The boulders above him shifted and slid down, and for an instant the crushing weight above him was reduced. Motormaster's engine roared like a beast caught in a trap and suddenly he was free, dragging his ruined trailer forward as he drove into the mineshaft.

Rocks slid down into the space where he had been, filling it with a crash of thunder. Motormaster ignored his new injuries and crawled up the slope of the mineshaft, inching his way forward. His engine burned, and he knew he would not be able to drive much further, but the slope leveled out a few yards later.

Motormaster hauled himself on to the horizontal ground and transformed with the last of his strength. The remaining energon cubes, ejected automatically, struck rock worn smooth through long use, but he didn't think he could have moved even if they had smashed. All he could do was lie face-down, engine turned off but trailing smoke. Every dent he had taken was a raw bruise.

The air stank of scorched rubber, and the mineshaft was nowhere near large enough for him in his root mode; the place felt like a stone fist closed tight around him. He turned his head wearily and thought of his berth back on the _Nemesis, _his own quarters, uncluttered and empty and spacious.

That made him remember the other Stunticons, though. Exhausted though he was, he levered himself up on his elbows and forced himself to think. Would they come after him to try to finish the job of killing him? In his condition, he wasn't sure he'd come off best. Or would they think that bringing down part of the mountain on him had finished him off?

He listened carefully, dialing his audials up again, but heard nothing. His radar didn't pick up anything either. _They must've gone. Cowards as well as backstabbers. _His fingers flexed involuntarily as he thought of how he would hurt them before he killed them.

But first he would lull them into a false sense of security. They could learn the truth, but they'd learn it later, once he felt a little stronger and was able to deal with them again. For the moment, though, they could believe they had succeeded in getting rid of him.

Now, how to make them think he was gone?

A gestalt bond was unbreakable except by death. Motormaster knew that, knew there was no way to completely cut himself off from his wretched subordinates. Even when he was punishing them, and had to – by necessity – block his side of the bond, he still sensed a little of what they did. Which was, in its way, just as much of a necessity; that way, he could always tell when he was approaching the limits of what he could administer while still keeping the other Stunticons online.

He could block his side of the gestalt bond now, but if they accessed the bond, they would know at once that he was active, just closed off to them. How to make it appear as though he was dead?

Twisting around as best he could in the confined space, he reached for one of the cubes and gulped gratefully at it while he thought. A pity he'd ever been made part of a gestalt. That had done nothing for him except to produce Menasor, who was a mess even by Stunticon standards, and to give him four traitorous underlings. If only he had been created by himself.

_Wait, what if I came as close as I could to that? _ he thought suddenly. _If I don't recognize the gestalt bond? _

He finished the cube, tossed it away carelessly and turned over, lying on his back. That hurt, but he was indifferent to the pain now. What he was about to do next might well finish the job his team had started, but he had to try it.

He accessed all his memories of the other Stunticons, of their merging, their link – and gave a command to seal those memories off from his processors. He couldn't delete them completely, nor did he want to, but he wanted them utterly inaccessible to even himself for a period of time. A twenty-four-hour lock would work.

_Execute,_ he thought.

It happened in seconds. Files were transferred to a protected location and the access pathways deleted instantly. New firewalls sprang up. There was a gap in his mind, and suddenly he was afraid – just how much of his own memory had he relinquished?

He tried to think back over what had just happened to him, only to find that his recollection was incredibly patchy. He remembered the Aerialbot attack that had sent him plunging off the road, but how had he ended up here? Someone had tried to kill him, but he didn't know who that was – when he struggled to remember, all he got was white noise and emptiness. As though the solid ground all around him had given way in little rips and fissures to reveal an abyss beneath. He probed deeper and found blocks to his memory – time-delay blocks that his own processors had constructed.

That was disturbing. Why had he sealed off his own memory? Could other 'cons have forced him to do that? Could they have been responsible for his injuries? Decepticons competed as a matter of course, and Motormaster knew that the Combaticons considered him a serious rival of theirs. Or was he just being paranoid, like… like… He paused, puzzled at the blankness at the end of that train of thought.

_It doesn't matter. I'll get myself out of here and deal with that problem later. _

A faint _ping_ startled him. _Radio,_ he thought and glanced at his controls. _Soundwave._

A wave of relief flowed through him – at least he remembered Soundwave – but it was gone almost at once. What was he supposed to say in reply, that he had blocked off part of his own memory and didn't know why? That would go down like a mouthful of melted slag. Worse, he would probably be ordered back to the base so that Soundwave could poke about in his head.

_Not going to happen. I'll get through this and contact him in my own time._

His systems began to power down automatically; he was desperately in need of some recharge so that his self-repairs could at least start on all the damage he had taken. His last thought was that it was odd he'd closed off some of his memory – that certainly wouldn't protect him from the Combaticons. It was almost as if he had to wall himself off from someone who could access his mind, like Soundwave.

There was no one else who could do that, though. He lay alone beneath a mountain, and the dark solidity of rock closed in around him as he slipped into recharge.

* * *

****

"_What d'you mean, they never found his chassis?_" Drag Strip said.

They were in one of the training/simulation suites on the _Nemesis_, where Dead End could technically claim to be following Megatron's orders to make sure his team was in shape. In reality, they were going through the motions, no one bothering to dodge blank-shots since they were too focused on what Dead End had just told them over the private Stunticon channel.

"_He has to be dead._" Breakdown tossed off a shot in Wildrider's general direction and hit the wall three feet away. "_You couldn't sense him over the link, so he has to be._"

"_Maybe he came to, crawled off somewhere else and deactivated,_" Drag Strip said hopefully.

"_Or maybe the Insecticons found and devoured him._" Dead End felt a familiar leaden weight settling across his shoulders; the more his subordinates tried to pretend everything was all right, the worse he felt. It was as though he and he alone knew just how bad their situation was. "_Or maybe he considerately blew himself up with that energon._"

"_Okay, you've made your point!_" Drag Strip fired straight at him, a beam of light striking him in the chestplate. Dead End looked down at the bright spot and then up again at Drag Strip, holding his gaze until the ray vanished.

"_There's nothing to be gained by speculating about what could have happened,_" he said finally. He was starting to regret telling the rest of them, but what choice did he have? They would have heard the news sooner or later. "_So until there's a response on the radio or our link, we'll go about our routines and duties._"

"_Why don't we go out there and find what's left of him?_" Drag Strip lowered the muzzle of his gun. "_Make sure he's dead. Once and for all, get it over with._"

Wildrider and Breakdown also stopped pretending to participate in the session, and violet optics fixed on him. _Wonderful,_ Dead End thought. He knew Soundwave would be monitoring them, watching for any suspicious activity. "_No,_" he said. "_We don't leave the base unless it's by Megatron's orders._"

"What?" Drag Strip said aloud. "Since when we were so kowtowy to Megatron?'

"I want to go visit--" Wildrider began.

"I said no." Dead End looked around at the three of them, and suppressed a sudden urge to draw his air compression gun. It might impress on the other Stunticons the necessity of following his orders, but it would also escalate the tension between them. If he had no choice but to be their leader, at least he didn't need to be the kind of leader who threatened or harmed them.

So he focused on speaking quietly, remembering that whenever Motormaster had done that, everyone had either frozen in fear or hurried to obey him. "We will remain here," he said, putting as much conviction as he could into his voice. "We will continue with our training sessions and we will not discuss this again. Have I made myself understood?"

"Yes," Breakdown said, but Wildrider said nothing as he tilted his head in the bare minimum of a nod. And Drag Strip's optics burned behind his visor.

"You're a fool," he said.

"Have I made myself understood?"

"Yes. Sir."

* * *

****

**Taipan Kiryu :** Yes, the only reason Megatron isn't throwing all the surviving Stunticons in the brig and having Soundwave forcibly investigate their minds is what you pointed out – they're his gestalt. Megatron had no problems with reprogramming the Combaticons in "The Revenge of Bruticus", but he expects more loyalty from the Stunticons.

Which is why (as Dead End says) they _cannot_ risk crossing him in any way. They're on very unstable terrain right now.

Thanks for your review!

**Death Scribe :** "Hopefully the Stunticons can keep it together"? As far as Dead End is concerned, there's no hope for any of them. He may well try to overcome his own flaw so that he can lead and protect his team, but overcoming their weaknesses is another problem altogether…

You were right about Motormaster still being out there – he's not so easy to get rid of. And I think he'll hate Dead End even more for trying to take _his_ place. There's only one Stunticon leader.

**Fire From Above :** Exactly – Geri would be a stabilizing influence for Wildrider. Plus, the story would probably detour into their usual antics, rather than taking a downward spiral as the team slowly falls apart in resentment and distrust.

Good guess on what Motormaster will do in the future, too. :)

**Kookaburra :** Glad you're enjoying the story! If you haven't read anything from Dead End's point of view, I recommend Dragoness Eclectic's 28 Dead Ends, which is a favorite of mine. She gives some wonderful insights into Dead End's delightfully bleak mindset, and I love the fic where he singlehandedly takes on Optimus Prime, Jazz, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker.

Oh, and I finally managed to get a handle on Motormaster's character, thanks to a suggestion from Koi Lungfish, so there'll be more from his point of view too.

**Wildimus Prime :** I'm glad you like the concept! After reading so many fics which showed just what a sadist Motormaster can be, I kept wondering what would happen if his team finally decided they couldn't take any more of it.

And _Macbeth_ is my favorite play. I love the way the main character starts out not just sympathetic but having good relationships with his peers, only to slowly crumble under the weight of a crime that was supposed to make his life better. Let's see how closely I can parallel that here. :)

**tomorrow4eva :** You're right about the additional pressure of lying to Megatron, and it won't just be Megatron they'll have to deal with. The other Decepticons – much like Onslaught – can smell blood in the water.

I'm very pleased that you liked the air of paranoia here! It'll get much more intense before the end.

**IccaRa :** It means a great deal to me when people say that my fics made them like the Stunticons. I became a TF fan because of fanfics, and fell in love with the Stunticons because of their quirks and faults, their gestalt and their individuality. And I agree about seeing facets of our own personalities in them; maybe it's because they're so flawed, maybe because there's something good in all of them.

Which applies to Motormaster too, of course. Though as far as Shakespeare analogues go, he's much closer to, say, Iago or Richard III than to Duncan (except that he's not in any way physically weak or non-confrontational). Thanks for your quote from _Macbeth_; that sentiment is going to be very real to Dead End and the others from now on.


	5. Unfinished Business

**Chapter 5 : Unfinished Business**

"_You and I have unfinished business." -- The Bride, Kill Bill._

_

* * *

  
_

Wildrider had come up with a plan, which always made him feel good. It was a simple plan, which made him feel even better; his more complex plans usually didn't work out.

He had zero intentions of being stuck down in the base forever while Dead End, a.k.a. Leader Spoilsport, refused to let him leave, but there was an easy way to deal with that. Just cause enough innocent trouble that Dead End had no choice but to let him out. A race would do that, especially if he and Drag Strip knocked something down (or someone over).

Of course, being thrown in the brig for doing that was also a possibility, but the last time that had happened to Wildrider, he had simply run his engine until the entire space filled with carbon monoxide. That got into the ventilation systems, set off an alarm and resulted in him being thrown out, which was just what he wanted.

So now he pinged Drag Strip, targeted his location to the Stunticon common room and set off there at a hundred miles per hour. He didn't doubt that Drag Strip would go along with the plan. Not only did it involve a race, but Drag Strip was usually… not _nice_, exactly, but a little less self-centered and demanding after he had resorted to what Dead End referred to as "emotional blackmail" to get his way.

Wildrider all but flew into the common room and pulled up short with a screech of brakes, transforming and turning as he did so. Drag Strip was pressed into a corner of the couch, apparently fascinated with the movie that was playing on their large-screen TV, though Wildrider didn't need a gestalt link to tell when his teammate's mind was a thousand miles away.

"Why the frag are you watching that?" he said.

"What?" Drag Strip said without looking away. "It's a film with a car."

"Yeah. _Driving Miss Daisy_." Wildrider put a palm on one arm of the couch, hopped nimbly over and landed with a thump that made the entire structure shake. Drag Strip stared at the screen and said nothing.

"What's the matter, sunshine?" Wildrider said, though he had a feeling Drag Strip was still brooding about what they had done to Motormaster. Wildrider had stopped doing that after a few hours, but then again, as Motormaster himself had pointed out on more than one occasion, Wildrider was incapable of holding a thought in his processor for long. That was one reason Motormaster had frequently called him an idiot (the other reason was that Motormaster put his subordinates down as a matter of course, and Wildrider didn't feel insulted by being told he was insane).

Drag Strip finally dragged his attention away from the televsion and looked straight at Wildrider, though no expression was visible behind his red visor. "Wildrider…" he began.

"Yeah?"

"Was your first time with Motormaster?"

Wildrider went still, his mouth half open. He had never expected to be asked that. Not because intimacy was a particularly private topic among the Stunticons – it wasn't – but because they simply didn't talk about it in the context of Motormaster.

Not that Drag Strip was at all prudish about other mechs' personal lives; he was always ready to share speculations about whether Starscream got off on being beaten by Megatron, or whether the Constructicons did it with i-beams. He was especially fond of crude jokes about Prowl's romantic pursuits (or the lack thereof) since those gave him something to taunt the Autobot with whenever they were within yelling distance. But he never discussed what any of the Stunticons had done to them in Motormaster's quarters. None of them did.

So now Wildrider gaped at him for a moment before shutting his mouth hastily and staring at the screen in a desperate hope for inspiration. Needless to say, there was none. _Stupid lame film. I'd have run over that old glitch if she'd talked to _me _like that_.

_I guess I could tell him the truth,_ he decided. After all, Drag Strip had asked. And any more silence on Wildrider's part would probably make him clam up and not say anything else. Wildrider had a feeling that Drag Strip's moments of honest vulnerability came along about once every millenium and were best not ignored.

"Nope," he said, fumbling for the fast-forward on the remote controller before he remembered that the film featured the slowest driving he had ever seen and no crashes or stunts at all. "Um, remember right after we came to Earth and thrashed the humans and the 'bots, Megatron ordered a retreat? Dead End was moping 'cause he was all dusty, so I said I'd help him clean off. Um… yeah."

Drag Strip stared at him. "You don't waste any time, do you?"

Wildrider grinned, though he remembered what it _had_ been like with Motormaster. He'd expected to be slapped around at least a little after their defeat – they'd lost their second battle against the Autobots – and he knew that was partly because they hadn't functioned so well as Menasor. Feeling all the other Stunticons' emotions and hearing their thoughts had been a genuinely fragged-up experience. If they had originally merged in the _Nemesis_ or even on Cybertron, Wildrider thought he might have stood a chance of holding it together, but combining for the first time in the heat of a battle had really not been the best of ideas.

So after they had returned to the _Nemesis_ he had not been too surprised to be called into Motormaster's room, though he soon realized that the Stunticon leader had worked off most of his fury on the other members of the team and was in a different but no less dangerous mood by then. Wildrider had shrugged inwardly and gone along for the ride – he would try anything once. It hadn't been a pleasant experience, since Motormaster was still angry at their failure.

Over the years since then, Wildrider had learned that Motormaster enjoyed controlling anyone who shared his berth. As a result, the Stunticon leader sometimes made a pretense of consideration to keep his partners off-guard and unsure, never knowing when he would turn cruel again. Wildrider hadn't been so fortunate the first time, though. And he had only made matters worse by asking, half-way through the session, if Motormaster had ever noticed that the crack in the ceiling of his room was shaped like the curve of a Seeker's wing.

_Note to self, as Dead End would say. When someone's fragging you, don't comment on the shapes of cracks in the ceiling. _Wildrider had gotten a few cracks of his own for that one, though at least his first experience had not been either violent or manipulative.

He wondered if Drag Strip's had been. After their first few battles, Drag Strip had always driven off by himself, and Wildrider had thought it was weird how he didn't want to hang out with the rest of them. Still, everything had seemed weird back then. "That's because you're insane," Dead End had told him, not unkindly.

"Guess it was pretty bad with you, huh?" he said to Drag Strip, hoping he wouldn't be called upon to provide sympathy. Wildrider didn't mind talking, but coddling anyone over an experience that had happened years ago was another thing altogether. He really didn't go in for that kind of Autobot slag. If Drag Strip started whining about whatever Motormaster had done to him, he was going to get a punch in the abdominal plating and an invitation to race.

Drag Strip looked down at his own hands. "It was about two weeks after we came to Earth," he said tonelessly. "Motormaster said he knew I thought I was better than the rest of you, and he was going to show me I wasn't. And… he did."

Wildrider waited but eventually realized he wasn't going to hear any of the details, for which he was grateful. Suddenly he realized that while he had always had his friendship with his teammates to fall back on when Motormaster had beaten or brutalized him, Drag Strip had held himself apart from the other Stunticons in a belief that he deserved better. No wonder Motormaster had gotten so far with him; the cracks that had been put in Drag Strip were more than chassis deep.

"Oh well, he's gone now," Drag Strip said, twitching one shoulder in a shrug.

_Yup,_ Wildrider thought. _And if he ever came back, we'd still live through it._ None of the Autobots or even Decepticons had managed to really harm the Stunticons when they stood together, five drawn together tight like the fingers and thumb of a fist. They closed ranks at any threat, together and unbreakable.

He supposed that could still happen when it was just four of them.

"I'm glad you never did that to me, though," Drag Strip said in a quieter voice. Wildrider looked at him, confused. "Got rid of me, I mean. That would've been harder to take than anything Motormaster handed out."

Wildrider didn't know what to say. He had always known Drag Strip's confidence in himself was on a par with Shockwave's juggling ability – very small – but even at his worst, the other Stunticons would never have forced him out of their team. Still, he was at a loss for words, and he didn't even feel like racing now.

Instead, he reached out and cupped Drag Strip's cheek in his palm, then leaned forward. Drag Strip's lips parted under his, and with a quick firm movement, Wildrider caught him around the waist with his free hand and pulled him down off the couch.

He didn't know if a bad experience in the past could be erased or even mended by a better one in the present.

But he would try anything once.

* * *

His radio pinged, rousing Motormaster from recharge. Struggling to shake off the bleary disorientation – he was a soldier, he was supposed to wake quickly to face any threat no matter what condition he was in – he checked the comm. Soundwave again. _Fragger._

Trying to recharge in the depths of a mine was quite different from doing so in his comfortable and well-ventilated room on the _Nemesis_, but Motormaster never complained or felt sorry for himself. Now he reached for another cube, relieved that he had a small supply of those, and finished it off. If not for his memories of the Aerialbots, he would have assumed that he'd been thrown into the mine as part of some hellish training exercise, given memory blocks and just enough energon to keep him functioning until he passed the test.

_Memory blocks. _He checked again, but there were still six hours to go before the firewalls would come down. Well, he wasn't going to spend that time doing nothing.

He looked over his self-repairs. The rents in his armor were being slowly, painfully sealed over, and his radiator was being fixed as well. _Good._ The blown tires would have to be manually replaced, though. Motormaster had two spares, so he sat up against the wall of the tunnel and twisted an arm behind himself to take the tires off.

_All this happened because of a tire replacement. _

The thought surfaced into his mind like an air pocket from the depths of a lake, and was gone fast as such a bubble bursting; he had no idea whose tire replacement had started the whole thing. It didn't matter. He replaced the two tires, then looked down at the shreds of rubber in his hands, the smears of oil and dirt on his armor.

_All right, what now?_

Motormaster felt at a loss. He didn't want to leave until his memory blocks lifted, but he couldn't just sit around using up his meager energon supply either. He hoped Soundwave wouldn't choose to ping him again; he might respond just so that there was someone in the world who knew he was alive, someone who was willing to speak to him. Not that Soundwave gave anyone anything beyond the most basic, stripped-down speech.

_Or commands._ Motormaster was sure that he wasn't going to take any commands from Soundwave, though. He had a feeling that he preferred giving orders to taking them, but he wasn't sure who he might have given them to.

_Doesn't matter. What do I do now?_

_I could make more room – it's slagging cramped in here._

Motormaster drew his atom-smasher rifle from subspace, flipped the settings, aimed it at a forty-five degree angle and fired. There was a soundless explosion as rock fragmented into dust, and Motormaster's intakes closed automatically. He built up a mental map of the tunnel as the dust settled, comparing its dimensions to his height and width in both modes, then fired another carefully controlled shot to bring down even more of the roof.

He shoved the masses of dust into narrow side-tunnels and kept working, relieved to have something to do, although once or twice he felt tremors shiver through the rock above his head. He froze each time, wondering if he had just destroyed something the Constructicons would call "load-bearing"; the only "bracing" he did was preparing for impact, rather than propping up tons of rock. Nothing descended on his head except more dust, though, and he plowed on grimly.

Breaking through a wall of rock, he discovered another passage on the other side, perpendicular to the corridor he had just widened. Except towards the right, the passage ended in a mineshaft that plummeted so deeply it seemed bottomless. If his headlights had not been on, he would have fallen in. _And probably gotten stuck._ To the left, though, it opened into a space large enough for him to stretch full-length.

_My T-shaped territory._ Motormaster lowered himself to the rocky ground. Dust gritted in his joints, covering him in a thick coat, and his colors were no longer visible. Not that he really cared about his paintjob. He wasn't prissy or vain, like… like…

Silently cursing the walls that kept him cut off from his past, he opened another cube of energon, lay back and bent an elbow behind his head. Despite the dust and the hard floor beneath him, it was the most comfortable he had been for the past day.

He turned off his headlights to save energy and stared up into the darkness. There was one final bit of excavation needed – blasting a way out – but he would do that once he had rested a little. It was just a coincidence that the work would also distract him if the loneliness grew too strong. Motormaster hated feeling vulnerable, and resented the idea that he might need anyone.

Except perhaps Megatron, but that was acceptable. Megatron was his leader, after all. He followed Megatron's vision, obeyed Megatron's orders (most of the time, anyway) and fought Megatron's enemies. Motormaster wouldn't have known what to do without that rigid structure governing his life, as it had been from the beginning.

_I should be there now,_ he thought; he didn't need his internal chronometer to remind him of meetings. _In Megatron's audience chamber, letting him know how our latest--_

He felt every gear and servo tense, suddenly and involuntarily. _So I _was _one of his commanders. And we don't have such things as temporary teams, so I must have had other mechs under my command. But why can't I remember who they are? Why did I seal that off?_

Gritting his jaws together, he fought to remember but the effort came up against mental blocks less breakable than steel. Motormaster felt his temper starting to rise, then thought that of course the attempt to remember had failed – he was up against his own mind, and something so strong would always be undefeated. That helped calm him, and he decided to try another tactic. Perhaps there was something in his subspace compartment which would give him an idea what had happened.

He gave a silent command to eject, bringing his hand up at the same time, and a smooth weight dropped into it.

The hilt of a weapon, Motormaster knew without even looking. He could feel the heft and balance as if it was an extension of his arm. There was a control on the side of the hilt, and he pressed it curiously.

Cold light danced along the edge of a sword. Motormaster held it up, admiring the cross-guard and the blade, then tested it against his thumb. Not only did that open his armor, but even as reflexes jerked his hand away, he knew that the sword's energy would have fused the circuits beneath his plating. He grinned, thinking of what the sword would do if he impaled an Autobot on it. How long before the crackling surges would fry the laser-core?

_Days,_ he hoped, _if the Autobot is Optimus Prime. _

_I'll do that later._ He subspaced the sword. _For now, I have another problem._ Obviously there was nothing in his subspace compartments that would indicate what he had lost, and he felt a moment of disquiet. Was it normal to carry around so little? Just a rifle and a sword?

_Why not? They're powerful weapons. What more do I need?_ With his alt-mode and his weapons, he could drive as far as he liked and defeat anything in his way. He wished dealing with his memory blocks would be as direct as smashing through a roadblock or running over an Autobot.

But all he could do there was outlast the mental walls – which would be in place for nearly an hour more, according to his chronometer. That wasn't much time, but it seemed to stretch out to the point where he performed a self-diagnostic on the chronometer to make sure it wasn't running slow. And he still hated the idea of just waiting passively until then.

He tried to imagine who the members of his team might have been. He already knew that his alt-mode was a tractor-trailer, so were the others big rigs as well? _No. There's no point in everyone in a team having the same alt-modes – look at the Combaticons. So my subordinates would need to have what I don't. _

He glanced down at his frame, even though he couldn't see it in the dark. _Big and powerful, but not maneuverable, especially in small places,_ he thought, somewhat reluctant to admit to a deficiency. _Lot of weight to pull, too. _So the other members of his team were likely to be smaller and faster.

_Cars, maybe. _

_On the other hand, if they were smaller, they'd be inherently weaker and easier to damage. Easier to kill._

Motormaster turned the possibility over as he would have turned over an undetonated bomb. Was that why he couldn't remember his team? Because they had all been deactivated, maybe in the same explosion that had trapped him beneath a mountain? He knew that four of the Aerialbots had attacked him. Could they have destroyed his team as well?

It didn't seem likely – what kind of weapons did the Autobots have, to wipe out so many Decepticon warriors at once? – but Motormaster couldn't think of any other explanation. On the other hand, he also couldn't see why he would have sealed off his own memories of that. He wasn't a weakling. Even if he was forced to watch his team destroyed, he could bear it – and more importantly, survive to make sure that whoever had done that paid dearly for it.

_No one takes what's mine,_ he thought. It wasn't soppy sentiment he felt – that kind of slag was for Autobots – but responsibility. He had a duty to his subordinates, just as he had one to his leader. He obeyed Megatron and was rewarded, just as his own troops obeyed him and were protected. If anyone had dared to interfere with that chain of command…

He drifted into a pleasant waking dream where he had one of the Aerialbots pinned down, his knees planted on wide wings. The sword burned colder than ice in his hand. Methodically, he removed piece after piece of the Aerialbot's armor, cutting away metal to reveal the wires and receptors and struts beneath. He did it slowly and carefully so fuel lines were intact and the Aerialbot wouldn't slip into stasis lock.

He left the blue optics intact in the flayed face, though he didn't think the Aerialbot was capable of sight any longer.

But Silverbolt certainly was. His back was pressed flat to the side of a nearby cliff, nearly thirty feet off the ground, so he had a good view of the proceedings. Molten metal held him in place there – his own melted armor that had cooled and fused to the rock, pinning him in place like a butterfly.

Other than that, though, he was untouched. Motormaster felt his mouth curl into a smile. _If I lost my team but stayed online, it would be only fair to return the favor._

Reluctantly, though, he decided to stop thinking about that. He had nothing against torturing his enemies, but there wasn't much point in just imagining it. He would only rev himself up until his mouth went dry and his fingers twitched with vicious need, a hunger that had to be satisfied somehow.

It had happened before.

_Anyway, it's nearly time._ A quick check of the memory blocks showed that there were just a few more minutes before they would come down of their own accord.

_Three minutes. _Then he would know exactly how he had found himself trapped beneath a mountain, alone and injured.

_Two._ Then he would know who had taken away the troops under his command – because if his subordinates had been alive, they would have been searching for him, contacting him.

_One._ Then he would destroy whoever was responsible for both.

_Zero._

The memory blocks came down.

* * *

Drag Strip hummed under his breath as he approached the corridor that led to the Stunticons' quarters. For once he wasn't racing in alt-mode; Dead End had made it clear that he wasn't going to put up with anything being driven into or anyone knocked over. Dead End seemed to be drunk on his own power, but Drag Strip was feeling too good to be irritated.

Besides, while that rule was being handed down from on high, he and Wildrider had amused themselves by coming up with nicknames for Dead End over a private frequency. "How about Floatermaster?" Wildrider had said, and Drag Strip had needed all his self-control not to burst out laughing. He decided to give it a few hours – he was tired and wanted some recharge after his shift on monitor duty – and then he and Wildrider would race around anyway until Dead End let them leave the ship.

Swindle and Brawl were talking in low voices at the start of the corridor, but they stepped aside as he approached and Drag Strip gave them the kind of look he would have granted week-old roadkill. As far as he was concerned, the Combaticons had no business being anywhere near Stunticon territory. He set off down the corridor and by the time he was halfway down it, the two of them had disappeared. _Wildrider and I should drive through their turf, let them see what--_

There was a soft thumping sound in the distance.

Drag Strip strode closer. The corridor was a long one, with his and Breakdown's rooms on one side, Wildrider's and Leader Sadsack's on the other. At the end, the corridor turned left past Motormaster's quarters, but even though the entire passage was poorly lighted, Drag Strip couldn't see anyone outside the rooms when the _thump_ echoed again. _Maybe Wildrider's bored again and kicking something in his room._

Metal struck metal with a sharp clank, like someone bumping hard into a table. Drag Strip stopped. _Weird, that sounded like it came from… from Motormaster's quarters._

His paces grew slower and more deliberate as he approached the end of the corridor. There was a soft sound of classical music playing from Dead End's room, but he couldn't hear anything else. _Must've just imagined it,_ he thought, looking suspiciously at the closed door straight ahead.

_Clank_.

Something had moved behind the door. Drag Strip felt servos tighten in his elbow and knee joints.

He activated his forcefield, then drew his gravito-gun from subspace instinctively, not knowing what good the weapon would do but determined not to be unarmed. Especially not if he was facing… whoever it was behind that door.

For the third time, the _clank_ sounded, except it was followed by a series of scrabbling thuds, as though the thump against the furniture had upset something stacked on it. Drag Strip swallowed hard, bracing himself. Then he stepped up close and smashed the heel of his free hand down on the door's switch, ducking to one side as he did so in case Mot--whoever was inside started shooting.

With a quiet hiss, the door slid open. Drag Strip waited for a long freezing moment, then whirled and sprang through the doorway, relying on his usual speed to save him from any shots coming his way. His gun was before him, braced in both hands, ready to fire back.

Except the room was empty.

Drag Strip glanced to either side of him, quick looks that revealed nothing. A few datapads lay on the floor beside Motormaster's desk, but everything else in the room was neat and in place. Drag Strip took a pace forward.

"I heard you, whoever you are," he said. _The berth, under the berth. There's no other hiding place._ "Just come out with your hands up and you won't be shot."

Swiftly he ducked and shoved the muzzle of his gun under the berth, then paused. Nothing was there except a can of transmission fluid that seemed to have rolled into a corner, and Drag Strip didn't think the can was responsible for any of the sounds he had heard.

He straightened up again, looking around. There was a practice dummy shaped a little like Optimus Prime in one corner of the room, and judging from its battered appearance, Motormaster had evidently used his sword on it. _No one's hiding inside it, are--_

"Drag Strip?" someone said from behind him.

Drag Strip jolted, spun on his heel and nearly shot Breakdown. "Primus!" he said when he could speak again. "Don't _do_ that!"

Breakdown stared at him, violet optics very bright in his red face. "What… what are you doing in here?"

Drag Strip started to reply, then thought better of it. Breakdown was paranoid and edgy anyway; he would probably get worse if he heard of strange sounds in Motormaster's (empty) room. Worse, he would probably spill it to Leader Depressedicon. Even if there weren't few secrets among the Stunticons, things like that emerged in berth talk. _Then I'll look either trigger-happy or nervous or both._

"Nothing," he said, subspacing the gun and trying for his most convincing casual look. He strode past Breakdown and placed his hand over the switch, waiting expectantly until Breakdown, with a quick look around the room, joined him. Then he hit the switch and the door slid closed again. The room was silent.

"Well, I'm off for some recharge," he said and walked away. Breakdown stood in the corridor, watching him.

* * *

Breakdown sat on his berth, back to the wall and knees drawn up comfortably so that he could rest a datapad on them as he wrote.

_ENCRYPTED, PRIVATE AND HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL. Journal entry 15.3.15. Author: Breakdown. _

_It's been over a day since the incipient, and it'll be many more days before everyone leaves us alone. They all stared when I went into the commissary to get our energon. They all stare at me anyway, but it was more incense that time. I felt like their optics were drilling holes right through me, as if they could see past my armor and circuits into my CPU, and they knew everything we'd done._

_I'll ask Wildrider to reprieve our energon next time. _

_Drag Strip was acting strangely a few hours ago. I found him in Motormaster's room with his gun drawn, as if he was searching for someone in there. Dead End says he was probably elucidating, but I'll bet someone was in the room. If they were all staring at me, why wouldn't they try to get into Motormaster's room as well? It's not like anyone's there to stop them now._

_Dead End says it's normal to imagine things when you have a lot of guilt on your mind. I wonder if he ever imagines--_

There was a ping on his radio. Breakdown saved and closed the journal entry – he was always careful about doing that – and checked the frequency. The Stunticon command channel. Well, Dead End certainly had the authorization to use that channel to get in touch with the rest of them, but why do it when they were all at home and off-duty?

With a sudden resurgence of the suspicion that was never far from him, Breakdown checked the source of the signal.

_Motormaster._

He froze, the datapad clutched so hard that his fingers would have hurt if they hadn't felt numb. Abruptly, the signal cut off. The ping was gone as if it had never happened.

Breakdown stayed motionless for a few long minutes, tensed for another such hail. When it didn't happen, though, he searched through every channel the Stunticons had ever used and quite a few they hadn't, but there was no sign of someone trying to contact him.

_It was Motormaster, I'm sure of it, but what do I do now?_ Dead End might think he was imagining things too. If he had been recording every incoming transmission, there would be some evidence of Motormaster's trying to contact him, but he hadn't been doing that.

_That's Breakdown for you,_ his teammates would say. _First he thinks everyone's staring at him and now he's hearing voices too._

He made a note of the occurrence in his journal, though, since no one read that and criticized him for whatever he wrote it in. Then he got down off his berth and went to Dead End's room, entering the access code through force of habit. Dead End was lying on his berth, classical music playing.

"Is everything all right?" he said as the door closed behind Breakdown.

Breakdown had nearly forgotten how sensitive the gestalt bond could be at times. "I'm okay," he said. And he decided that he was; that radio transmission had been so fleeting, an echo from the past. Probably just a gestalt ghost, a last gasp from a dying Menasor.

_Okay, that's morbid. I'm not going to think about it any more. _

He pushed the matter out of his mind and lay down beside Dead End. The berth was narrow, and Dead End turned on his side automatically, his chestplate pressing against Breakdown's back and spoiler. A dark-red arm wrapped around Breakdown's waist. The low purr of engines was a rough, familiar counterpart to the delicate notes of music.

"What's the song?" he said drowsily.

"Symphony," Dead End corrected. "Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the Resurrection." He leaned closer and nuzzled Breakdown's helm.

* * *

"Wildrider? Hey, it's Swindle. Can I talk to you? I've got kind of an odd idea, but there could be a profit in it for both of us."

If Wildrider had not been bored, he might have turned Swindle down; if Swindle had not mentioned "an odd idea", he might have done the same thing, since he couldn't have cared less about profits and losses. He _was _bored, though. Until Drag Strip finished recharging, they couldn't race, and he wasn't sure what else would annoy Dead End to the point where he allowed them both to leave.

"Okay, come on over," he said over the radio and Swindle was at his room in a few moments. He looked around with an optic acquisitive even for him, evaluating everything.

Of all the Stunticons, Wildrider was the most fond of collecting things – seashells, DVDs, human weapons, shiny geodes, musical instruments and Autobot body parts all jostled for space in his room. Swindle looked as though he would dearly love to go through the entire collection, but he managed to look away from it.

"Got a deal for you, Wildrider!" he said. "Since Motormaster doesn't exactly need any of his things any more, I could take 'em off your hands. Now, any other mech might charge you for disposal services but I won't. I'll even pay you for it. What do you say?"

An uneasy feeling prickled along Wildrider's circuits. Technically, yes, Motormaster was dead and no one was using anything of his. But selling his possessions to a Combaticon seemed kind of… low.

He said so, since he didn't bother to be tactful except when he cared about whoever he was speaking to (in other words, three Stunticons and one human, which left Swindle out). The Combaticon didn't seem offended, though.

"Oh, come on," he said. "Don't tell me you can't use the money. Buy your friends something nice." Wildrider still hesitated, and Swindle went on. "Look, how's this? I'll pay you for a preliminary inspection."

"A what now?"

"Just to look over his stuff. Half a cube, how's that?"

Still on half-rations, Wildrider couldn't help the little jolt his holding tank gave at that. "Okay," he said. "Hand it over first."

Swindle went off to get it, making Wildrider wish he'd negotiated for a whole cube. Half wasn't much, and would be even less after he split it with Drag Strip. _Oh well, still something for nothing._

He stowed the half-cube away when Swindle returned, and led the way to Motormaster's room, palming the switch. "There you go."

"Come on in," Swindle said. "I wouldn't want you to think I was trying to grab anything while you weren't looking."

There was precious little in Motormaster's quarters to steal, but Wildrider did as the Combaticon requested, then pulled himself up to sit on the edge of Motormaster's desk as Swindle poked curiously around the room. The practice dummy thumped loudly against the wall as he brushed against it, but he didn't seem disappointed at the lack of possessions, let alone valuable ones.

_Dull, dull quarters,_ Wildrider thought, looking up at the crack in the ceiling. The place was sterile compared to his room or Breakdown's. Dead End's room was fastidiously neat, but he had cabinets full of cleaning supplies and two large mirrors (Drag Strip had once snickered that Dead End should have had a third mirror mounted on the ceiling above his berth). As for Drag Strip, he didn't have much except for a trophy display case, but that held a gold cup he had once won in a human race. It looked kind of small and alone in the large case, but Drag Strip was proud of it anyway.

Motormaster's room was conspicuously bare in comparison. Swindle rattled the desk compartments open noisily, but there was nothing inside except for a wheel that looked as though it had been broken off an airplane's undercarriage. Wildrider thought Motormaster had carried the only things he valued – his weapons. Nothing else had really seemed to matter to him.

The door flew open. Drag Strip flung himself in, dropping to one knee in a shooter's crouch, gun drawn and pointing at them. Wildrider had nearly gone for his own gun at the sudden movement, but he paused in confusion. Swindle froze, staring at Drag Strip.

"Don't shoot," he began.

Drag Strip's optics flickered brightly behind his visor. "What are you doing in here?" he said abruptly, straightening up.

The gun was still pointed at them, and Swindle looked as if he expected it to be used on him at any moment. Wildrider slid off the desk. "How 'bout you put that away," he said, tilting his chin at the weapon.

"Was that you I heard in here earlier?" Drag Strip said.

"What are you talking about?"

"I heard someone moving about in here. Was that you?"

"Wasn't it?" Swindle said. "I mean, I saw you leave here earlier, Wildrider. That's why I came to ask you if you'd let me in. I thought you must have whatever access codes the door takes."

Wildrider looked from Swindle to Drag Strip, suddenly unsure. He knew his memory wasn't of the highest quality; that was one side-effect of being insane. Had he gone into Motormaster's quarters earlier and forgotten about it?

"Get the frag out, Swindle," Drag Strip said, and Swindle slid out as if his feet were oiled. Drag Strip subspaced his gun but waited until the door closed behind the Combaticon to continue.

"What did you bring him in here for?" he said.

"He wanted to see if the boss had any stuff worth selling." Wildrider was starting to feel defensive. "Why'd you get so upset?"

There was a second of hesitation, so brief that only another Stunticon might have noticed the difference for Drag Strip, who was always quick to reply. "You had no right to bring him here without telling the rest of us!"

"He was just having a look! You want me to get your permission before I refuel too?"

"Did he pay you for this look?" Drag Strip's voice was suddenly soft. "Thought so."

"I was gonna share--"

"Forget it." Drag Strip turned on his heel. "Just leave me alone." The door slid shut behind him.

* * *

_Author's note : Sorry about the delay between chapters – real life and other fics got in the way. Thanks for your patience and for reading!_

**tomorrow4eva :** Oh yes, they are absolutely finished either way. I knew before starting this story that things would get very, very bad for the team. Now it's just a matter of seeing how self-destructive their characters and choices can be.

**Taipan Kiryu:** I'm glad you liked Motormaster. :) He wasn't easy to write, because there needs to be a balance between his cold sadism and his strength and loyalty. And he's single-minded; there's not much he values in life other than his position in Megatron's army, leading the Stunticons.

I don't know if this story will make anyone feel at all sympathetic towards him, but as long as he comes across as more than a cardboard villain I'll be happy.

I also like the theory that Motormaster does care about his fellow Stunticons – he just can't express that in any way other than possessiveness, cruelty and violence. From his point of view, though, they should understand that. If they didn't matter to him, he'd ignore them or be indifferent to them.

Thanks for reviewing!

**Kookaburra :** Dead End will soon learn that there was a reason for Motormaster's management style – it made Drag Strip and Wildrider obey him.

**Fire From Above :** Glad you liked Motormaster's point of view. Of all the Stunticons, he's the most difficult to write – especially here, because it was so introspective, and Motormaster is nothing if not a mech of action.

**Peacewish : **Thank you! I hope there's plenty of suspense in this chapter as well. It would be difficult enough for the Stunticons to deal with their own faults and fears, but now they've got Motormaster, the Combaticons and the rest of the Decepticons (who can all smell blood in the water).

They're in for a nightmare of their own making.

**Tugera :** The Combaticons have never forgotten the "Starscream's Brigade" incident. And there are a couple more creative killings (or at least Motormaster's wishful thinking of such killings) in this chapter, so I hope you like them. :)

**MJFastlane **: Thanks very much. I'm glad you enjoyed the story, and please do let me know if you spot details I've gotten wrong (or typos) – I'd appreciate that. I'm the kind of person who checks three different websites to find out if Motormaster's weapon is a cyclone gun or an atom-smasher rifle. :)


	6. Fate Accompli

**Chapter 6 : Fate Accompli**

_Fait accompli. English translation: An accomplished fact; an action which is completed before those affected by it are in a position to query or reverse it.

* * *

_

"I've heard this _interesting_ rumor, Dead End," Starscream said. "Mechs say that you and the other Stunticons had a little more to do with Motormaster's death than you've admitted to Megatron."

Always punctual, Dead End had decided to be a few minutes early to the meeting Megatron had called. All the other team leaders would be present, plus it was his first such meeting in the role of the Stunticon commander. He'd thought making a good impression would help – and it might have, if Megatron hadn't been late (not that Megatron was ever late; it was just that everyone else was too early).

As a result, the only other section head in the room was Starscream, and he hadn't wasted any time before moving in for the strike.

Dead End looked steadily back at him, wondering how much of a coward or fool Starscream took him for. That kind of frontal attack might have rattled Breakdown or made Drag Strip respond in a defensive way, but he wasn't going to be bothered by it.

"Go on," he said.

Starscream looked a little blank.

"Please go on with what you were saying," Dead End prompted him.

The Air Commander was millions of years older than he was, though, had more experience with such games and recovered with speed. "Perhaps it was something you didn't plan," he suggested. "It must all have happened so fast. Perhaps you just… stood by and watched." He paused as if to allow Dead End to contradict him or agree; neither happened. "Either way, though, you would face heavy repercussions from Megatron if he were ever to find out."

That was true enough, so Dead End didn't reply. _Still, _he thought,_ no punishment of Megatron's is as bad as what Motormaster would do if we were ever at his mercy again. _

"You have nothing to fear from me, though." Starscream lowered his voice to a confiding tone. "We both understand ambition. We both know that if a leader falls in battle, it would be nothing more than our duty to take up their responsibilities. We'd owe it to them and to our fellow warriors."

Dead End wondered if he owed Motormaster anything. _No_, he decided. He had paid his dues already – paid in pain more times than he could count. And he was the lucky one of the team. His fatalism meant he expected beatings well before they came his way, and his apathy meant he rarely cared about Motormaster's attempts to belittle or humiliate him.

On the other hand, there was the time Motormaster had nearly called Breakdown into his quarters as well – "either you give me a good enough performance, Dead End, or the both of you will" – but he tried not to remember that.

"Oh come now, Dead End." Finally there was an edge of impatience in Starscream's rasping, scratchy voice. "There's no need to be so closed-mouthed. I have no reason at all to go to Megatron with anything you tell me, and it's not as though this conversation is being recorded."

"Isn't it?" Dead End said and flicked his radio off with an audible click.

The expression on Starscream's face was almost delightful enough to make up for the weariness he felt; if dealing with the Air Commander's power plays had been part of Motormaster's job description, Dead End had never known it. Then again, he doubted Starscream would ever have tried anything like that with Motormaster. Not only was the former Stunticon leader's loyalty to Megatron unquestioned, but Motormaster would have folded Starscream's wings into new and interesting shapes had he been forced to sit through a speech like that.

Scrapper and Onslaught came in, so fortunately the conversation was over. Megatron arrived shortly afterwards, and Dead End listened through the briefing with half an audial. The first thing he had had to deal with that day was a report that someone had scrawled "MOTERMASTER LIVES!" on a wall in one of the storage bays.

Called upon by Astrotrain to comment on that when he had gone into the commissary, Dead End replied that it was unlikely to have been done by Motormaster, who at least knew how to spell his own name correctly. He realized a moment later that he had referred to the ex-Stunticon leader in the present tense, and could only hope that the gathered 'cons would remember his sarcasm rather than his slip-up.

Then there had been Wildrider's little jaunt through the ship, a two-hundred-mph joyride that had left tire tracks on the ceilings and flattened a door. Wildrider had only been stopped when he had crashed hood-first into Ramjet, who was fortunately built to take that kind of impact – and who _still_ ended up needing repairs. Dead End had escorted Wildrider from the repair bay to his quarters, where he was now confined until further notice.

He had a feeling that a more appropriate punishment would have been to throw Wildrider in the brig. But a bored Wildrider was even worse news; with nothing to do in the brig, he was sure to come up with some way to get out. Wildrider wasn't as smart as Breakdown, but his insanity often worked _for_ him in situations like that. He would think of something so bizarre and crazy that no one had anticipated it, and since he never worried about consequences, he would go ahead and try it.

_He'll probably get out of his quarters too,_ Dead End thought gloomily. He had changed the access code on the door – as the Stunticon leader, he could do that – but it would make little difference to a really determined Wildrider.

_And then what?_

He didn't know. Wildrider didn't seem to take his authority at all seriously, and Dead End had no idea what to do to change that. _Hit him? Break him as Motormaster would do - no, would have done, get under his armor and into his head and hurt him _that _way? _The thought was sickening… and yet Motormaster's methods had maintained order.

_Some order_, he thought bitterly, _if it's left me with this mess on my hands._

He tried to stop brooding. He had scheduled a training session for that afternoon, thinking it would give Wildrider and Drag Strip a chance to work off some of their energy – well, so much for _that_. But perhaps it would be good for team morale, and Megatron would certainly find out if he had let his troops slack off. So he went to the training room, where Breakdown and Drag Strip were waiting.

"Didn't take long for you to start throwing your weight around," Drag Strip said as he transformed. "Why don't you just send Wildrider to the surface to spin his wheels? That's what Megatron did once."

"And look at what happened," Dead End said. Besides, he couldn't risk it. If Motormaster was still online he might be watching out for them, lying in wait.

_Was getting rid of him meant to make our lives easier?_ he wondered. _We can't even go to the surface alone any more._

"Get into position," he said, drawing his gun before Drag Strip could challenge him any further. "We're start--"

Drag Strip shot forward, clearly intending to ram him. Dead End fired twice, but Drag Strip knew exactly what his gun was capable of. He jinked from side to side in wide zigzags that avoided the worst of the blasts of compressed air, then hurtled on. Dead End ignored the jangling tension in his circuits, took careful aim and fired for the last time.

Drag Strip was going too fast to dodge, so he flipped on edge instead. On three wheels, he zoomed past Dead End, turned in a tight graceful curve and dropped to all six again as he charged from behind. There was no time for Dead End to turn and fire.

So he slammed both thusters and antigrav instead, and fired down just as he was all but exploded off the ground. Drag Strip zoomed under him just as he did that, and his forcefield turned to crackling whiteness as it took the full brunt of the shot. He skidded away, slowed and stopped.

Dead End settled back down on the floor, relieved. He hadn't known if his maneuver would work, but he _had_ known that a defeat at Drag Strip's hands would do serious damage to what authority the team perceived he had. No wonder Motormaster had rarely trained with them. It was easier to respect a leader whom you had never managed to best in battle (or otherwise).

Drag Strip transformed, shaking his helm a little. Breakdown asked if he was all right, but he ignored that as he turned to Dead End. "What, you couldn't manage without cheating?"

Dead End was taken aback. Drag Strip complaining about someone else cheating was a case of Skywarp calling Trailbreaker black. _And when did I cheat, anyway?_

"I beg your pardon?" he said.

"You _used_ your _thrusters_," Drag Strip said, enunciating each word with care. "The 'bots don't have those."

"We're not doing exact simulations," Dead End said, trying to control his impatience. Of all his teammates, Drag Strip was the most likely to irritate him out of his usual indifference, except as the leader he couldn't show that Drag Strip had even that much of an effect on him.

Breakdown nodded. "And you used that swerve-rearcharge routine the last few times we practised," he said. "I was expecting you to repeal it."

Drag Strip looked confused for a moment, which was all the time Dead End needed to say, "Start again. Breakdown, you're with Drag Strip this time."

Breakdown drew his gun but before he could move into position, Drag Strip shook his head. "Let's you and me have another round, _leader_."

"I said, you're with Breakdown."

Drag Strip sneered. "Afraid you'll lose this time?"

_Ignore it or punish him?_ Dead End decided to ignore it, because the training session was already short one of his team. "Get into position."

Drag Strip hesitated, then obeyed, but a grin spread across his face. "Guess you can't risk getting any more scratches on your fender panels, huh?"

_Any more?_ Dead End glanced down automatically at his legs, but realized even before he saw the pristine dark-red paint that it had been a joke. _A snide, stupid joke_. He heard Drag Strip chuckle, and something went _snap_ in his mind.

"That's it," he said, looking up. "You're confined to quarters too."

"What?" At least that made Drag Strip lose the smirk. "You can't do that!"

Dead End said nothing – he'd learned from the Starscream incident that silence was a very effective response.

"Just because I teased you? What kind of fragging leader gets torqued for that? And how are the two of you going to practice without me? Or is there something else you're planning to do and you just don't need me around for that?"

There was still no response, mostly because it was starting to be enjoyable watching Drag Strip froth with frustration that he wasn't getting any reaction. "Why the frag aren't you saying anything? Is your vocalizer as defective as your CPU?"

Dead End simply waited, expressionless.

Drag Strip looked at Breakdown, realized that he wouldn't get any help there and turned back to Dead End. "How long is this stupid punishment going to last?" There was no reply. "What, you're not even going to tell me? You – you're crazier than Wildrider!"

He transformed and drove out at top speed, but even over the roar of a high-performance engine, Dead End thought he heard something like, "You should've been under that landslide too…"

* * *

_Motormaster wouldn't have stood there and just listened to all that_, Breakdown thought. _But Dead End isn't Motormaster._

A lot of the tension had left the training room when Drag Strip did, and now Breakdown allowed himself to relax – well, not so much relax as sag against the wall. He couldn't help feeling happy, though. Dead End wouldn't hit or bully them, but his methods of maintaining order seemed to be working too, which meant Breakdown had made the right decision in supporting him as the Stunticon leader.

_As the humans would say, I backed the right hose._

"You okay?" he said to Dead End as he straightened up.

"I'm fine, thank you." Dead End subspaced his gun. "I'll go by his room now and change the access code."

The cool briskness didn't fool Breakdown. "He'll get over it," he said quietly. "They're still used to the way Motormaster handled things. They'll need some time to get accosted to you."

Dead End made a non-committal sound, glanced at him and looked away before the scrutiny could become unnerving. "He's jealous, isn't he? Of the fact that you're my second-in-command, I mean."

Breakdown went very still. "I'm your--"

His radio pinged and he checked it, feeling annoyed. _That had better not be Drag Strip comming me to complain--_

The frequency was Motormaster's.

Breakdown felt as though an icy wind had swept through his frame, chilling him from the inside. Gathering all his courage, he opened his side of the comm.

Static, the sound of tinfoil being crumpled slowly, crackled over the radio, then dropped off into nothingness. His radio readout showed that the comm had been cut from the other side.

"Breakdown?" Dead End said.

"I…" Breakdown swallowed. What was he supposed to say? Dead End had enough on his mind without having to deal with those phantom, aborted transmissions. "N-nothing. I guess I'm just tired," he added lamely. "I'll go recharge a bit. Unless there was something you needed?"

Dead End shook his head, but he was still watching and that made Breakdown almost as unsettled as the sudden silence in the room. "Well, I'll see you later, then," he said, and transformed, remembering at the last minute to keep his speed at a hundred.

He drove to his room, though being there behind a closed door did little to calm him. Automatically he checked the place for cameras that might have been installed while he had been out, but there were none. The fine wires that stretched over his desk drawers and the cabinet beside his berth were still intact.

Breakdown lay down on the berth and rested an arm across his optics, fighting an urge to curl up to make himself a smaller target. _Do it,_ he thought, _get it over with._

He opened a comm to Motormaster. _Come on. If you're there, if you want to talk, let's do it. _

There was no reply. The radio signal vanished into deadspace.

"Come on," Breakdown muttered. "I wasn't imagining things. I _wasn't_. You tried to contact me, I know you did. Was that just to scare me? Well, I wasn't scared, so you can stick that up your tailpipe."

His fuel pump slammed harder at that, sending more energy through his components to prepare for an escape or a beating, but there was still no response on the comm.

Breakdown's temper began to rise, and he didn't think the sudden anger was spillover from Drag Strip's side of the gestalt bond. It was all his. For the first time in their lives, they had the chance to be secure and safe and even… happy. Dead End was a good leader, and Breakdown, who had been mocked so often in the past as the weakest of the team, was his second-in-command. He was _not_ going to let anyone threaten that, not even Motormaster.

"Come on, you slag-sucking Prime wannabe!" he snapped. "Where are--"

There was a loud thump in the room next to his.

Breakdown paused. That had come from Drag Strip's quarters, but he supposed Drag Strip was now bored as well as angry and probably just racing about.

Something shattered, the sound muffled through the wall. Then a distress signal lanced through the comm, high and sharp.

Automatically Breakdown traced it to its source. _Drag Strip._ He opened the comm.

"_Breakdown, help me!_" Drag Strip's voice was thin and terrified. "_He's here!_"

Breakdown was off the berth before he realized it. "_Motormaster?_"

Metal slammed into metal in the room next to him, so hard that Breakdown felt the vibrations through the floor. "_Help--"_

The comm was cut off.

Breakdown ran out, sending a swift message to Dead End as he did so. He had no time to wait for a reply. Drag Strip's door was just a few yards away, and he punched in the access code Drag Strip always used – P34, followed by a string of 1's. Nothing happened. _Right. Dead End changed the code._

He heard the _crrrnch _of something being twisted slowly behind the door.

Breakdown drew his concussion rifle, socked the barrel against his shoulder and fired at the lock. There was a soft, brief hiss and the red "active" light on the lock went dark. Panting through his intakes, Breakdown grabbed the edge of the door and wrenched it open.

Drag Strip shot out like a yellow bullet, so fast that the edge of his forcefield clipped Breakdown's leg, unbalancing him neatly. He staggered and lost his footing just as Drag Strip zoomed off down the corridor, shouting, "Thanks, Breaky!" as he did so.

Breakdown sat down hard and remained sitting in the empty corridor for a moment or two as the sound of Drag Strip's engine died away. Then, moving slowly and carefully, he subspaced his rifle and pulled himself back up to his feet. Still not quite able to believe what had just happened, he closed his fingers around the doorframe and peered into Drag Strip's room.

There was a dent in the wall and broken glass on the floor, but the room was empty. _Of course._ Breakdown still felt dazed, as if Drag Strip had run him over rather than just clipping him.

Something tapped his shoulder. Breakdown jerked and spun around, the paralyzing shock broken. Dead End stood behind him.

"Where is he?" he said.

Breakdown felt as though all his internal components had just fallen down into his feet. "Who?"

"Motormaster!" Dead End managed to keep his voice quiet, but Breakdown still heard the snap behind the words. "You said he was here."

"He – he isn't. Drag Strip sent a distress signal saying he was, so I got the door open but--"

"He was lying!" Dead End shook his head, exhaled through his vents and leaned against the wall. "Unless Motormaster's been receiving lessons in teleportation from Skywarp, he couldn't have just arrived here without anyone noticing. How could you have believed Drag Strip? I thought you were more intelligent than that!"

"I…" Breakdown faltered. _No choice about it now._ "I've gotten comms from Motormaster a couple of times now. I – I was trying to reach him on the radio when Drag Strip sent the signal."

Dead End straightened slowly. "Motormaster's tried to contact you."

He didn't sound as though he was asking a question. Breakdown managed a nod, tried to look into the blankness of Dead End's mask and visor and glanced at his own feet instead.

"Are you certain you weren't imagining it?"

That stung. Breakdown knew he was paranoid, but he wasn't _crazy_. "I'm not Wildrider," he whispered. "I don't imagine I'm hearing things."

There was a long pause. "You still shouldn't have believed Drag Strip," Dead End said finally, flatly. "You know what he's like."

Breakdown nodded again. He had a feeling that his brief career as the Stunticon second-in-command was over, but that wasn't as important as dealing with Drag Strip before word of the escapade got out; both Breakdown and Dead End would be the laughing-stocks of the ship if it did. "What shall we do?" he said, daring to look up.

Light gleamed purple in Dead End's visor.

* * *

Drag Strip took a corner on three tires, skidding only a little, and shot into the elevator a moment before the doors slid shut. He slammed into the opposite wall, but he had already hit the brakes and since his forcefield was active, the impact didn't hurt.

The only problem now was where to go. The ship was large, but he couldn't just wander about indefinitely. If Dead End wanted to track him down, Soundwave had cameras everywhere. And Drag Strip didn't particularly want to find hidey-holes on the lower decks, the ones that sometimes got flooded. That was for scared little glitchmice like Breakdown.

He transformed and pressed a few of the elevator's controls – he wanted to stay on the move, just in case Dead End was giving chase. Not that that seemed the kind of thing he would do. _Might get dust on his pretty paintjob,_ Drag Strip thought, _and I'd leave him choking on my exhaust anyway._

His radio pinged and he checked it reflexively. _Well, well, speak of the moron._ "_Hey, Dead End_," he said with an amusement he didn't need to fake – he'd gotten around the punishment, after all.

"_All right_." Dead End's voice was curt and clipped. "_If you want to be out of here so badly, do it. At least that will ensure you're not damaging the ship or getting in anyone's way. I've requested that Soundwave raise the docking tower for you._"

Drag Strip smiled. _That's more like it_.

"_There's hope for you yet, Deadly,_" he said, using an old nickname he knew Dead End hated. "_A little bit more of that and I could get used to being on your team. Hey, can I take Wildrider with me?_"

"_Why not?_" Dead End said, sounding resigned to the inevitable. _As well he should_, Drag Strip thought. "_He'll just cause trouble down here otherwise. I'll let him out and tell him to meet you at the hangar._"

"_You do that,_" Drag Strip said happily and stepped out when the elevator came to the correct floor. Humming, he drove down a corridor, slewed into an open doorway and raced to the tower's base. Then he transformed and waited impatiently for Wildrider.

_Hurry up!_ he thought, engine revving with anticipation. There was a whole world of racing and chasing and fights and games on the surface waiting for them, even if Wildrider would probably slip away at some point to see a little juicebag he'd actually befriended once. Which was further proof of his insanity, not that any was needed.

Soft steps sounded in the corridor and Drag Strip turned eagerly. He realized a moment later that Wildrider would have driven in rather than walking up to the door, but by then it was too late.

Breakdown appeared in the doorway, rifle raised, and fired.

The colorless blast hit Drag Strip full in the chest. Every strut and component felt as though it had turned to fine wires and a gale had rushed through the resulting meshwork, wrenching him off his feet. He staggered and collapsed. Before he could even hit the floor, Breakdown shot him again.

Drag Strip's vision broke up into a sea of flickering red, as dozens of systems failure warnings flashed across his HUD. He couldn't speak or move, much less transform. From a distance, he heard Breakdown walk over to him.

At first he thought that his audials were damaged too, because there was the echo of a second set of footsteps that didn't keep pace with Breakdown's. Only when the shadow fell over him did he realize – slowly, through a daze – that Dead End was there as well.

He tried to lift his arm. It didn't even twitch. He thought of drawing his gun anyway, and the words SUBSPACE INACCESSIBLE wrote themselves before his optics.

"Does he need another shot?" Dead End's voice sounded completely detached, as if he had been looking down at an Autobot.

In Drag Strip's peripheral vision, he saw Breakdown shake his head. "No. It was on full power, both times."

Something nudged the point of Drag Strip's shoulder, and he realized a moment later that Dead End had prodded him with one foot. "Not too pleasant when a teammate lies to you, is it?" He turned away. "Take his legs, Breakdown."

Breakdown moved to obey, dark-blue hands closing around both Drag Strip's ankles just below the large wheels. "Aren't you getting his arms?"

"Why bother?" Dead End said, not even turning around. "Oh, and Breakdown? If he moves of his own accord, kindly shoot him again."

_No_, Drag Strip thought, as much in response to the idea of being pulled back to his quarters as to the thought of being shot again. But his vocalizer was as slagged as the rest of him. He tried to comm Breakdown instead.

RADIO OFFLINE. ESTIMATED REPAIR TIME 2.5 BREEM.

The worst journey of Drag Strip's life then began. Dead End led the way and Breakdown hauled him along like a sack of spare parts. His back and spoiler were scraped against the floors, while his head thumped painfully down a short flight of stairs. He couldn't imagine how much dirt was being smeared on his frame, but he forgot all about that when his teammates dragged him past some of the other Decepticons.

"Guess that's why they call him _Drag _Strip," Skywarp said, chuckling.

"Do – do you need some help with that, Breakdown?" Mixmaster called out. "Shall we fetch Long Haul?"

"Hey!" There was a sound of a scuffle. Drag Strip couldn't even turn his head to see it.

"Dead End, there are other ways to stop him bragging about himself!" was Thrust's contribution. "Unless you just like 'em semiconscious?"

Humiliation scorched its way through Drag Strip's circuits, and if he could have died at that moment, he would willingly have done so. _No. It's not me who should die. It's Dead End._

"Frenzy, get one of those cyberslugs from Starscream's lab!" Rumble said gleefully. "I'll bet it can reach the brig before Speedy Yellow Slaghead does!"

Swindle immediately began to inquire about how much Rumble was willing to bet, but Drag Strip didn't hear anything else. _The brig?_ Suddenly the burning shame was gone, replaced by coldness. _Dead End's throwing me in the brig?_ In all his life, Drag Strip had never been in the Decepticon brig; Motormaster's punishments had been brutal, but they had sent him in the other direction, to the repair bay. Prisoners were thrown into the brig, not Decepticon warriors.

If Drag Strip had thought he was humiliated before, it was nothing compared to how he felt at that moment.

He could see the empty cells now, and they seemed impossibly tall with his head at floor level. He was hauled into one and Breakdown released his legs with a _clank_ as they hit the ground. Then he stepped out, leaving Dead End in the cell.

Drag Strip felt tension clench deep within as Dead End knelt down beside him. Black fingers closed on the sides of Drag Strip's face, turning his head so that he could look Dead End in the visor, in the flat featureless gleam of purple.

"Listen to me." Dead End's voice was as soft as quicksand. "This team is more important than any… one… mech in it."

He punctuated each word with a tightening of each finger on Drag Strip's cheek. "That went for Motormaster. That goes for you too. If I can't depend on you to do as you're told, we'll function without you. Do I make myself clear?" His digits clamped down to the point where Drag Strip knew they would leave dents.

Part of Drag Strip's mind knew he had to say yes, told him to say yes. With an effort of will he moved his mouth, and the last of his strength went into the activation of his vocalizer.

"Frag you," he whispered.

Dead End stared down at him for a long moment, then released him abruptly. The back of Drag Strip's helm clunked on the floor and the sides of his face hurt dully, but he ignored that and stared up at the ceiling of his cell. Dead End stepped out and did something at a control panel on the wall.

Energon bars crackled into existence. Drag Strip heard his teammates walking away, and the sound of their footfalls faded into silence.

With glacial speed Drag Strip's systems recovered, one by one. The neural circuits in his limbs flickered back into life and his radio was online again. Not that he ever wanted to hear Dead End's or Breakdown's voices again.

But Wildrider hadn't betrayed him. Wildrider might still help.

Drag Strip managed to sit up. The air felt cool on his back where the paint had been scraped away. Worriedly, he glanced at the door to the prison bay.

No one was there, but the door was open – anyone could come in and walk past the row of empty cells to taunt him. He had to act quickly, had to get out of there before the other 'cons decided to make further sport of him. And since there was nothing in the cell which could help him, that left only one choice. He opened a private channel to Wildrider.

He wasn't sure if Wildrider could get him out, since the cell bars were controlled by the identification and authorization codes of section heads. But Wildrider was the only mech he knew who had managed to get out of the brig.

"_What do you want?_" a voice said on the other end of the comm.

Drag Strip hesitated. For once, the eager cheerful quality that could so easily edge over into hyperactive lunacy was absent from Wildrider's voice. He just sounded… flat.

"_I need some help,_" he said cautiously.

"_Help?_" Wildrider spoke as if pronouncing the word for the first time. "_After you got mad at me earlier and told me to leave you alone?"_

_Oh frag_, Drag Strip thought. Wildrider didn't often hold grudges and never did that with his teammates… but he was doing it now. _I thought he'd have gotten over that, or at least forgotten about it, with his slagged-up memory banks._

_Wait, if he's got slagged-up memory banks..._

"_What are you talking about?_" He tried for a confused tone.

"_You know,_" Wildrider said. "_You burst into Motormaster's quarters when Swindle and I were there, and you were really torqued off at me."_

Drag Strip let a moment or two pass in silence. "_Wildrider,_" he said carefully, "_you're having another episode. Whatever you're talking about, it didn't happen."_

Wildrider hesitated, and when he replied, he sounded uncertain for the first time. "_Really?"_

Drag Strip nodded, realized Wildrider couldn't see him and said, "_Yes. You're just imagining things. Remember the time you imagined your stuffed kangaroo was talking to you?"_

"_Yeah…"_

"_Well, that kind of thing just happens to you from time to time, because of your mental problems. So now you've imagined that I was angry with you."_

"_Oh."_ The reply was so quiet that Drag Strip nearly missed it.

"_But it's all right,_" he said soothingly. "_We're still friends. Now, can you come down here and give me a hand? I'm kind of stuck--"_

"_Hold on a second,_" Wildrider said, and cut the comm.

_What?_ Drag Strip wanted to hit something; he had been almost halfway out of the cell there! He'd convinced Wildrider to trust him, so it would have been smooth driving to get Wildrider to the prison bay to release him somehow, if not for the interruption. Had Dead End come to see Wildrider? Had he told Wildrider not to interfere?

Several more seconds passed, and developed into minutes. Drag Strip's frustration grew along with them, but he swallowed that determinedly when the channel opened again; he couldn't afford to take his feelings out on Wildrider.

"_Hey,_" he said.

"_Drag Strip._" Wildrider's voice had changed, and was no longer uncertain. "_Swindle says it _did_ happen, just as I said. He and I were in Motormaster's quarters when you burst in with your gun drawn and got mad at me for no reason. You were lying to me just now. You were fragging with my head._"

Drag Strip listened to that speech with rising horror, sharp as the taste of a caustic in his mouth. "_What the frag did you ask Swindle for?_" was the most he could say. "_And – and who are you going to trust, me or him?"_

"_Well, I guess you're _both _liars._" Wildrider's tone was tired and bitter. "_But I also guess you've got the most to gain from sucking up to me right now, 'cause Swindle says you're in the brig. And you can slagging well stay there._"

He cut the comm.

Drag Strip remained sitting on the floor of the cell, not moving, long after his leg components were back online. He felt completely alone. There was no way out, and his entire team had turned against him.

Faint voices were raised in the distance, well beyond the door of the prison bay. Drag Strip glanced in that direction with little interest.

"No… no…"

Drag Strip frowned. Was someone else being taken to the brig? It didn't seem likely – twice in one day?

He heard the friction of feet rasping against the ground as they were pulled along, the _clank_ of a struggle. Something whirred softly.

"Onslaught, come _on_!"

He recognized the voice. Stiffening, he got up; he wasn't going to sit there crumpled and defeated on the floor before the Combaticons.

Onslaught strode into the prison bay, hauling Vortex behind him. Large though the 'copter was, Onslaught handled him easily, ignoring his protests that he hadn't done anything. He shoved Vortex into the cell opposite Drag Strip's and activated the energon bars before Vortex could even get up. One of the 'copter's rotor blades was bent at an angle from the impact but he didn't seem to notice.

"Onslaught, this isn't fair!" he wailed. "C'mon, let me out."

Onslaught turned and began to walk away.

"I'll be good! I'll tell you where Thrust keeps pictures of Elita One!"

Onslaught didn't even look back. He left the prison bay and the outer door closed behind him.

Vortex sighed, reached up over one shoulder and took hold of the rotor blade between thumb and forefinger, bending it until it was perfectly straight again. Then he sat down on the narrow berth that was the only furnishing in the cell.

His head turned until he was looking across at Drag Strip, and a red glow lit the depths of his optics.

* * *

_My team did this to me._

Motormaster lay in the darkness, and the mountain above him didn't seem a tenth as heavy as the knowledge that his team had tried to kill him.

_Why?_ That was the part he didn't understand. _Why did they do it? _He knew they hated and feared him, but what difference did that make? He despised Breakdown, but he would never have tried to kill Breakdown. He couldn't stand Drag Strip's struts, but he had once taken a missile that had been aimed at the racecar.

He had no love for any of his team – he was, at best, slightly contemptuous of them – and yet he had hauled them back home in his trailer when they hadn't been able to drive after a battle. And when they had reached the ship, his team received repairs first. He only went under Hook's laser-scalpels when he was certain the other Stunticons were out of danger.

He had stood up for them when they had earned the other Decepticons' fury by racing through the ship and damaging property (or other mechs). Sure, he had beaten them for it in private, but he hadn't let anyone else lay a hand on them. He had put up with Wildrider's insanity and Dead End's various neuroses.

He had showed Breakdown that there were much more frightening things in the world than hidden cameras observing him. He had sneered at Drag Strip's eagerness to take part in human races, but he'd bet on his teammate each time and not complained even after he'd lost credits on one occasion.

_And this is how they repaid me._

Part of the confusion stemmed from his uncertainty about what the other Stunticons would do now that they had gotten rid of him – or tried to. Who was running the team? Who was keeping them in line, telling them what to do, punishing them when they disobeyed and looking out for them? Megatron wouldn't do it. He had more responsibilities and yet Motormaster couldn't think of anyone else able to take his place.

He also couldn't think of what to do about it. At first, anyway. His initial impulse had been to comm Soundwave, but he had crushed that idea. No, if he contacted the ship, Megatron would become involved, and Motormaster's team was _his_ concern. No one would get in the way of his disciplining his team for one last time. He and the other Stunticons had been created together as a gestalt, and even if they had forgotten that, he hadn't.

They had been his to command and defend.

Now they were his to kill.

* * *

_Author's note : Sorry for the long wait, everyone, but now that summer's here I'll try to update more frequently. Hope you enjoy this instalment!  
_

**Ponycorn **: You're right. Motormaster genuinely believes he's treating his team fairly. Sure, he insults and brutalizes them… but he also defends them and makes sure they have a place in the tough 'con hierarchy. It balances out, doesn't it?

I'm glad you're enjoying the story. :)

**some dood** : Oh, it's a catastro** all right. And that's been a lot of fun to write.

**MJFastlane :** Drag Strip and Wildrider have been taught to associate harshness with strength, so of course they take Dead End's (relative) leniency for weakness. And as you said, without Motormaster the roles in the team are much less clear and certain.

For that matter, without Motormaster they're no longer as capable of defending themselves from the other 'cons, who see a vulnerable gestalt and naturally try to get whatever they can out of it. Dead End means well, but he doesn't have Motormaster's sheer intimidation factor, or Motormaster's viciousness towards anyone who might frag with his team. Which was only rivaled by his viciousness _towards_ his team, of course.

**Taipan Kiryu :** I always intended this story to be Motormaster-heavy, so I'm pleased you like his part in it! Yes, there's the balance between a gestalt bond which links him to his team for life – and a murderous rage that I hope is entirely understandable.

And the other Stunticons are paying in their own way for it as well. You're right, Dead End will end up facing the worst consequences, though I'm sure that Drag Strip would disagree – _he's_ the one who suffered the most, thank you very much. As for the team itself, the union they had when facing a common threat… that's gone for the moment.

Hope you like this chapter too!

**Fire From Above** : Thanks for your review! And things should get even worse for the Stunticons… stay tuned.

**Peacewish** : I love that description – "_Now he's awake, aware, and awash in bloodthirst_." Yes, that describes Motormaster perfectly. And he hasn't even begun to exact the revenge he feels he deserves. Yet.

This is where the story and _Macbeth_ diverge a bit, since in the play, Duncan is well and truly dead, so he doesn't cause Macbeth's decline and fall. I'd recommend reading the play anyway, because it's brilliant, but it won't answer the question of how Motormaster eventually resolves matters.

I also think this occurs before the movie project, just because Motormaster is surprisingly lenient in allowing his troops to star in a human movie. Almost as if he'd learned a lesson of some sort about abusing them too much…

**Kookaburra **: Thanks! I like doing the shoutouts too – this feels like the one fic which connects all the others. :)


	7. Uneasy Lies

**Chapter 7: Uneasy Lies**

_Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. - Henry IV, Act III, Scene I

* * *

_

The shock of discovery was gone. In its wake, Motormaster's mind felt clear and cold as he thought about what he would do.

Since he couldn't return to the ship yet – if ever – he would have to make his little team of traitors come to him instead. He could issue a challenge, perhaps meeting them in a deserted location where they could fight it out openly, if any of the other Stunticons had the steel to do so.

Then he considered his condition and decided against that idea. He was battered and damaged. The leak in his radiator hadn't been repaired, which meant he wouldn't get very far in alt-mode before his engine burned out.

And even if that was fixed, he couldn't be certain of victory in such a situation. He had size and strength and toughness, but the other Stunticons had speed and numbers and maneuverability. Breakdown's engine-vibrations alone could damage him enough, if the others kept him from retaliating in time.

No, taking them one by one would work better. He could split them up and ambush them. Why not? They'd set the precedent for that, after all. And if they came into the abandoned mine searching for him, that would be easy. He was more familiar with the passageways and drop-shafts than they were, and he might even rig up a trap or two to welcome them.

_I'll have to do it fast, though._ He was down to his last cube of energon, which he didn't want to consume; as long as he still had it, he had _something._ So he had to bring his team out to him, down into the darkness where he waited.

Obviously the cowards wouldn't come out if he told them to do so, but if they felt they had no other choice… Motormaster thought about that. Was there any way that, hundreds of miles away, he could make their lives miserable enough that they decided to confront him, wherever he was?

The gestalt link wouldn't work for his purposes, so he dismissed it. The radio, then? He knew most of the channels his team used, but more importantly, he knew their weak points.

Motormaster felt his mouth stretch in a hard smile.

_Start with Breakdown,_ he thought. _He's the one who jumps if you look in his direction, so he's the least likely to be believed. No need to even say anything to him – actually, just cutting the transmission will work better, because he won't be sure if he's imagined it or not. _

He thought of doing the same thing to Wildrider, but the lunatic was better able to shrug off aborted comm signals. Even if Wildrider didn't assume it was his own eggshell cranium playing tricks on him, he didn't scare that easily.

_No, _he thought. _I have something else in mind for you._

_

* * *

_

It took some time to work out his idea, but Breakdown was too relieved to care. He had finally figured out what to do about the aborted transmissions that he knew came from Motormaster, the messages that said, in effect, _Each time you start to feel safe I'll remind you that I'm here, that I'm waiting, that I'm watching-_

Enough of that and it would make him as crazy as Wildrider.

At first Breakdown thought of simply blocking the channel. But Motormaster knew of others, and he couldn't block them all. _All right,_ he thought, _why not just cut to the chase? Talk to him. _

That would never have occurred to him before; he had been too intimidated by Motormaster. One glare from hard purple optics could dry up his mouth and make his mind go blank. But now it was a little different – Motormaster wasn't even on the ship any longer. And Breakdown was (_had been?_ he thought a little sadly) the Stunticon second-in-command.

Of course, Motormaster might simply cut the comm the moment Breakdown opened it from his end, but he found a way around that. He programmed a response that would play automatically when a transmission came in from Motormaster's frequency – and he knew what would keep Motormaster on the comm. Begging him and reasoning with him wouldn't work, but a single question – "Are you afraid to talk to me?" – stood a better chance.

He made a note of the arrangement in his journal, then tried to recharge, which didn't work. He simply stayed online with his systems humming, tense and ready. It was almost a relief when Motormaster's transmission came in – and this time he didn't cut the comm.

Breakdown opened it from his end, fearfully. He could hear nothing from the other side of the comm, just a hollow silence that would have had Wildrider climbing the walls.

"What do you want?" he said, hoping that his voice wouldn't shake. "In exchange for leaving us alone."

The silence stretched out for an unbearable moment, and then Motormaster spoke, the sound as echoing as if it came from the depths of a crevasse. "Are you in charge now?" he said.

Breakdown was a little taken aback; he hadn'r expected to be asked that. "No, Dead End is."

The low growl of an engine sounded like slabs of basalt scraping together beneath the earth, but Motormaster's cold considered tone never changed. "We can't discuss this over the radio," he said. "Soundwave may pick up the transmission. Tell Dead End and the others to meet me on the surface. I'll give you the coordinates."

Breakdown's internal components clenched as if vise-like hands had closed on them. "N-no. We're not meeting you anywhere."

"That's not for you to decide."

"It is. I'm the second-in-command now."

Motormaster actually laughed, and Breakdown cringed reflexively at the sound before he realized he was being mocked. A rush of helpless anger filled him, but Motormaster had already continued. "And I thought Wildrider was the one who imagined things," he said. "Now take my offer to your new leader."

"I said _no!_" Breakdown hated the shrillness of his voice, but he would rather have confessed everything to Megatron than met with Motormaster. At least Megatron would only kill him.

Motormaster was capable of anything from torture to forcing him amid the deactivated frames of his teammates to simply releasing him, so that he would wonder for the rest of his life why he had been spared when the rest of them had died. Breakdown had no idea why Motormaster didn't simply come to the ship to punish them, but he could hope the former Stunticon leader was lying immobilized or injured somewhere outside.

That thought helped steady him, and he spoke a little more calmly. "I said no. You want to talk to Dead End, you comm him. But he'll say the same thing I did, because we don't need anything from you. You're not our leader any more, you're not needed here, you're nothing!"

His voice grew shrill again and he cut the comm, trembling. Had it made any difference, what he had said, or had it only increased Motormaster's hate for them? He could _feel _that – fury and malice combined, pouring inexorably through the gestalt bond like an ocean current, a riptide that could draw anything down into its depths.

He realized he was gripping his shoulders tightly, elbows crossed over his frame, and forced his arms back down. _I'll be curling up with my back to the wall next, and I'm not going to do that. Not before reporting what I've found out. _

He left his room.

* * *

Drag Strip had been on edge at first. He'd tangled with Vortex in the past, enough for him to hate the Combaticon; if Vortex had gone down in a fiery crash, Drag Strip would have fanned the flames to make sure his laser-core wouldn't make it out. And now he was stuck there with Vortex only a few yards away. Not only was he the Combaticons' interrogator, he had a reputation for sadism that rivalled Motormaster's.

But Vortex said nothing. He just looked across at Drag Strip, looked back in a disinterested way and then lay on the berth with his systems powering down. Drag Strip began to relax.

After an hour of that, he was bored; after two hours, he was miserably lonely. Even when his teammates laughed at him or fought with him, he still felt like part of the group. He still belonged.

Now, he wasn't sure if he did, but he told himself fiercely that he was better off without Dead-from-the-neck-up End as a superior officer.

"Onslaught doesn't usually do this."

Startled, Drag Strip turned. He had nearly forgotten about the only other occupant of the brig, who was sprawled on the berth in his cell. It was too short for him, so his head hung down from one end. In a detached way, Drag Strip wondered if Vortex was seeing him upside down.

It didn't seem to bother Vortex, either way. He looked relaxed.

"He wouldn't normally throw me in the brig, I mean," he said. "Guess he was really torqued off. But he'll come back soon and let me out."

Drag Strip looked away. Much as he now hated Dead End, he couldn't help hoping that he would be let out first. He could well imagine Vortex smirking at him as he strolled away, perhaps even suggesting that he scratch lines on the wall to keep track of how long he was imprisoned.

Vortex whistled a few tuneless notes which sounded a little hollow, behind his mask. "Onslaught's a pretty good leader," he said more quietly, as if speaking to himself. "And even when he's mad, it could be worse. I mean, Brawl could be in charge." He laughed. "I'd rather serve under Blast-Off."

_I'd rather serve under myself,_ Drag Strip thought. _Why wasn't_ I _made the team leader instead of Dead End? He doesn't care about anything except keeping himself shiny. If I were in charge I'd have found whatever's left of Motormaster and dumped that in a smelter. And if Dead End gave me any grease I'd have dumped him in the smelter too._

He wondered why Megatron had ever chosen Dead End as the leader. Probably the same reason he'd ordered the construction of a base that looked like a giant purple flying… thing. Processor-glitches were only to be expected with increased age.

"Swindle would be worse, though," Vortex continued.

"Why?" Drag Strip couldn't resist asking. "Because he'd sell you for spare parts?"

If he had hoped to disconcert Vortex, it didn't work. Vortex laughed again. "No, because he'd never be able to keep authority on his own. He'd always need Brawl backing him up. Some mechs are like that."

_Like Dead End. He certainly couldn't handle _me_ without Breakdown's help._

"I'd rather not be in charge, though." Vortex interlaced his fingers over his chestplate and looked up at the ceiling. "I like having the freedom to take off whenever I please. Once Onslaught lets me out, I'll go for a spin over the surface. Find a cruise ship full of humans and show them what a wind funnel does to the water." He paused. "When are they letting you out?"

Drag Strip's throat tightened. _Should I make something up?_ But if he gave a specific time and no one showed up to let him out, Vortex would know he was lying. Unless Vortex was gone by that time. _Should I say a day? Two days? When did he say Onslaught was going to release him? _

Vortex sat up. "You mean they didn't tell you?"

"Why do you keep saying 'they'?" Drag Strip snapped. He hated the raw edge in his voice, the lack of control compared to Vortex's easy casual tone, but he couldn't help it. "It's just Dead End, so it's 'he'." _It's not Breakdown as well… it's not like they're all ganging up on me._

"Sorry." Mercifully, Vortex looked away and Drag Strip used the moment to offline his optics and concentrate on staying calm. _Calm, slag it!_

"Other than that," he heard Vortex say, "what's he like as a leader?"

Answers leaped into Drag Strip's mind but he clamped his jaws shut. Even when Motormaster had been at his worst, the Stunticons had never complained about him to anyone who wasn't in their team, so he certainly wasn't about to talk slag about Dead End to a Combaticon.

He wondered whether to offline his audials, but before he could do it Vortex spoke again. "He strikes me as the hands-off type. Passive. He and Breakdown anchor the team, but you're the one who kicks it into gear."

That was certainly true, so much so that Drag Strip onlined his optics again, and had to restrain himself from nodding in assent. _I am. I'm the one who convinced them to get rid of Motormaster – if not for me, they'd have stood there dithering until the waste of diesel came back online and ordered them to move their afts. I'm the team's drive and determination. _

_ So why am _I _the one in the brig?_

"Some mechs just play more of a role than anyone gives them credit for," Vortex said. "Maybe when you get out you can talk to him about that."

For a moment Drag Strip was afraid he had spoken aloud. "About what?" he said.

"Giving you more of a place in the team." Vortex reached over his shoulder, detached a rotor blade with a _clink_ and began to etch something on the wall with the tip of the blade. "More responsibility and status. Unless you haven't earned it yet?"

"Oh, I _have_," Drag Strip said shortly.

Vortex nodded, though all his attention was on his drawing. "Initiative is important," he said. "I've always thought that's why Megatron keeps Starscream around even after all the takeover attempts. Better to have a mech who cares too much than one who doesn't give a slag. Heh. Probably why he keeps _us_ around too, for that matter." He shrugged. "Some mechs have the struts to say what everyone else just thinks and keeps quiet about."

Drag Strip nodded. "Like me. Guess he just doesn't want to admit it now."

"Then remind him of everything you've done for the team." Vortex paused. "Or wouldn't he listen to that?"

"He listens to Breakdown, not me," Drag Strip said bitterly. "I had a hell of a time trying to convince the two of them to-"

He stopped, feeling as if a vacuum had suddenly replaced his chest components. _Primus. I nearly… nearly said it._

Vortex tilted his helm a little. "To do what?"

"Nothing. Shut up and leave me alone."

He thought that would torque Vortex off, because his teammates certainly wouldn't have put up with it. Motormaster had been especially disinclined to tolerate what he had referred to as "displays of attitude". But after a long pause Vortex said, "Okay, but if I were in your position I'd be getting out."

"Getting out?" Drag Strip repeated, glaring at him. "Sure, I'll just _walk_ through these bars. I'm sure they're here just to look pretty."

"Oh, come on." Vortex's voice took on a lazy purr, as if he were smiling behind the mask. "A bright 'con like you is never stuck for long."

Leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world and no obligations to fill that time, he finished his drawing. It was of a glitch-mouse in a maze, but after Drag Strip had craned his neck unobtrusively to look at it, he didn't think it was very good.

Vortex seemed to have forgotten to draw a way for the glitch-mouse to get out.

* * *

Dead End was off duty, which he thought was a joke. No commander was ever really off duty, especially not with problems like Drag Strip and Wildrider to control. He tried to rest anyway, knowing that it would be worse for him if he appeared at one of Megatron's briefings in an exhausted, half-online state.

He couldn't recharge, though. He lay on his berth, staring up at a ceiling he couldn't see with the lights off and thinking that the future was just as unclear – though much darker. _I always knew it was hopeless, but at least there was a possibility that we'd be doomed _quickly_. A shot through the laser-core, perhaps. That would have been more merciful than fighting among ourselves, always suspicious and on guard. We're being worn down to the point where we'll _want_ to die._

_And we did most of it ourselves. Congratulations._

He turned on his side, trying to make himself more comfortable. Sending his systems into forced recharge was an option, but he felt too apathetic even for that – and he wondered if there were any negative side-effects from doing so.

_To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come-_

Well, at least Cybertronians didn't dream. Though Dead End felt certain Wildrider did on occasion; that might explain why he was so difficult to share a berth with unless it was for interfacing. Wildrider twitched and giggled softly in recharge, and had once kicked him involuntarily. He had blamed that on something called restless leg component syndrome when Dead End had shaken him back online, but that didn't exactly repaint the scrape it left on a previously pristine shin.

Now, though, he found himself missing Wildrider.

_No, not quite,_ he thought. _Just missing someone's presence, anyone's._ He tried to shrug that off, to recapture his usual indifference. Not only was it weak to need anyone else, but what little authority he had in his team would dissipate if they saw that kind of vulnerability.

Motormaster had certainly never needed any of them to that extent. He had taken his subordinates to berth, but he had always kicked them out – sometimes literally – when the sessions were over.

_Motormaster._ A new weariness settled on Dead End like a yoke across his shoulders, pressing him against the unyielding surface of his berth. _What am I going to do about him?_ If Breakdown was right, if Motormaster was online somewhere, why didn't he simply come back to the ship to denounce them?

Megatron certainly wouldn't take their side if that happened. Dead End felt sure he would make a show of them being made to pay for their treachery, one optic on Starscream to be certain that he got the message.

So Motormaster had something even worse planned for them. And Dead End knew he couldn't anticipate every possible thing the ex-Stunticon leader might try. Sooner or later Megatron would order them to the surface for a mission, and he couldn't control his troops, fight the Autobots, carry out whatever suicidal assignment Megatron had for them _and_ deal with Motormaster at the same time.

_Wait, I'm assuming the confrontation will happen on the surface,_ he thought suddenly. _What if that's what Motormaster _wants_ me to believe? He need not denounce us openly, after all – he could simply return to the ship, meet with Megatron privately and then pick us off one by one, especially since we're all alone-_

With a quiet chime the door to his quarters slid open.

Dead End froze. He was lying on his side, with his back to the door, but he didn't dare turn – that would show he was awake. Instead he drew his gun, hoping the slight twitch of his arm as he did so wasn't obvious.

Footsteps paced into his room. He activated his forcefield.

"Lights!" he snapped, twisting violently so that he faced the door and rolling as he did so to get out of the berth. He clasped his gun with both hands, elbows locking rigid so that the weapon remained before him, trained on whoever had entered his room without permission, on…

…on Breakdown, who stood as if in stasis lock just within the doorway.

For a long moment Dead End couldn't lower his gun. His mind was still full of Motormaster, his hands still clamped on the weapon in a grip that he doubted even Motormaster could have pried loose.

"Dead End?" Breakdown whispered, so quietly that Dead End barely heard him. "It's me."

_Now he tells me,_ Dead End thought, and the familiar sarcasm helped a little. His joints creaked a little as he slumped, leaning back against the side of his berth. He slipped the gun back into subspace.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

"I – I spoke to Motormaster." Breakdown still looked as though he was surrounded by landmines and was safe only as long as he didn't move from the spot. "He said he wants to meet with us outside to… to discuss things. I said we wouldn't do that, and I ended the transition."

Dead End knew only too well what form that discussion would take. _The only question now is whether Motormaster does want to confront us or if it's all a ruse to misdirect us while he does something quite different. But why would he need to mislead or trick us? He holds most of the cards – one word to Megatron and we're all finished._

"Very well," he said, getting to his feet again. "You can leave."

Breakdown hesitated. "Could – could I stay here? Until you have to start your next shift, I mean."

An instinctive agreement nearly escaped Dead End, but cold self-control clamped down on that. He didn't need anyone else to prop him up, and there was enough friction in the team already without Drag Strip and Wildrider believing that he played favorites in that regard.

"No," he said. "This berth isn't large enough for both of us. And next time, ask for permission before coming into my room."

Breakdown looked at him as if seeing a stranger. His face was blank and his mouth moved once as if trying to speak, before he succeeded. "Yes." He backed away, felt for the door and opened it. "Yes, sir," he said, and left.

* * *

Drag Strip studied the walls and floor of his cell, since he certainly couldn't get through the bars. Metal plates overlapped each other and were riveted together. He kept a few tools in his subspace compartments, but he had a feeling that prying up part of the wall would either set off an alarm or be captured on the security monitors. He had his gun in subspace as well, but while that would do a quicker job on the walls and floor, it would also set off the alarms.

And prising apart the metal surfaces wouldn't really get him out, either. If he went left he would simply end up in another cell, and he wasn't sure what would happen if he went right. If he went through the floor he would simply find pipelines, cables, circuits and load-bearing struts, until he got all the way through the deck and fell out on to the next lower section of the ship. The ventilation ducts were carefully positioned outside the cells, and in any case the vent system wasn't large enough to accommodate anyone larger than one of Soundwave's runts.

Using his gun on the bars was not even an option. He didn't know how energon would behave under the crushing effects of rapidly increased gravity and he didn't want to find out.

Frustrated, he stared across at Vortex, who was now lying on the floor with his legs propped up on the berth. "Having a nice rest?" was all he could think of saying. Admitting he'd been defeated by the brig's construction was not an option either.

"Mm-hm. Though I'd prefer to be in my own quarters." Vortex stretched luxuriously. "Too bad the controls are out of reach, 'cause I know Onslaught's code."

Suspicion prickled up Drag Strip's back strut. "How would you know that?" He felt sure Onslaught would be more careful than to allow any of his subordinates access to his authorization codes.

He wished he knew Dead End's.

Vortex turned his head slightly. "It's my job to know things."

With nothing to say to _that_, Drag Strip turned away and looked at the control panel on the other side of the room. If the energon bars hadn't been in the way, he could have been there in a second; now he would need a twenty-yard-long arm to reach it-

"Your rotors," he said aloud.

"What?" Vortex sounded puzzled.

Drag Strip turned on his heel. "Your rotors! You can detach them and reach the control panel with them."

Optics bright, Vortex sat up. "Not bad," he murmured as he detached first one rotor blade and then the other. He drew his gun and there was a soft _gloop_ sound as a blob of glue stuck the two blades together, giving Vortex a single, extremely long length of metal. He slid it out between the bars, careful not to touch them.

That was enough time for Drag Strip to reflect on what an idiot he had been. What good would it do if Vortex got out? Why hadn't he thought of some way to make Vortex help _him_? But no, he'd spoken without thinking, giving someone else a perfectly good idea for nothing. The Combaticons would have a laugh at his expense later, though hopefully Onslaught would come up with a better punishment for Vortex first.

The tip of a rotor blade barely brushed the surface of the control panel, then pressed firmly on the number pad. Drag Strip had no choice but to watch. Vortex would escape right there, right from under his optics, and there was nothing he could do about it.

From time to time he heard a soft sizzling noise that was the rotor touching an energon bar, but although the entire length would twitch slightly when that happened, Vortex didn't hit the wrong keys. _Of course_, _the sick freak's got a lot of experience taking online mechs apart wire by wire. Holding a length of metal steady is nothing._

The controls chimed softly. Drag Strip didn't turn in the direction of Vortex's cell, because he didn't think he could bear a triumphant or patronizing expression, but he still heard the energon bars hiss into nothingness.

"That wasn't too bad," Vortex said. There was a sharp _snap_ which Drag Strip guessed was the glued-together rotors being broken apart, and then the clicks and scrabbles as Vortex fitted them back into place. "Your turn now." He strode out of his cell and crossed the length of the brig.

Drag Strip stared at him, taken aback, but Vortex didn't even look back as he wrenched off the the entire front cover of the control panel. That made Drag Strip flinch involuntarily, even though no alarm went off, and the sight beneath the cover didn't help. Two fistfuls of wires, red as deep-sea worms, tangled on the left and right sides of the interior of the control panel, and he had no idea how Vortex planned to figure out Dead End's code.

Vortex turned. "There's no way to get you out without tripping the alarms," he called out. "Still want to do it?"

Drag Strip barely had first thoughts about that, let alone second ones. How could he remain behind in his cell like a helpless Autobot while Vortex walked out free?

"Do it," he said.

Vortex's reattached rotors spun a little, as if of their own accord, making a soft whirring sound. "If those control power to the opposite sides of the brig-" he said, and his left hand shot out. It closed over the left set of wires and tore them loose.

The control panel sparked as if lightning had struck it, but any hissing of electricity was lost as the brig alert went off. An instant later the energon bars disappeared and Drag Strip flung himself out of the cell, transforming in mid-air. Vortex had already pulled open the outer door and he ran off in one direction, so Drag Strip took the other. He accelerated, heading for the elevator which would take him to the Stunticon level of the ship.

"Prison escape detected," Soundwave's monotone voice said over the ship's intercom system. "All Decepticons: on alert for fugitive Drag Strip."

_Did he leave Vortex out on purpose or did they catch the overgrown ceiling fan already?_ Drag Strip mentally shrugged it off; he didn't have time to think about Vortex. He had a feeling that just getting to the Stunticon level of the ship would be a bit of a challenge – as he turned a corner, the elevator doors opened and Long Haul stepped out.

He jerked back reflexively at the yellow blur bearing down on him, though, and he wasn't even armed. Drag Strip slowed, wondering if he should just shove the Constructicon out of the way.

In that moment, a small dark shape flew over Long Haul's shoulder straight at him. Drag Strip slewed into a bootlegger reverse and roared away, but the Insecticon let fly with an electricity discharge that struck his forcefield. It flickered and went down as it absorbed the massive surge.

"I got him, got him!" Shrapnel yelled.

_I'll run you over for that one day, you just wait!_ Drag Strip gunned his engine again. There was another elevator on the other side of the ship, so he still had a chance. His digital speedometer blurred, his speed climbing to a hundred, two hundred, nearly at three-

It was the only thing that saved him as Dead End shot out of another corridor at maximum velocity. He nearly slammed broadside into Drag Strip. As it was, a ton of metal traveling at two hundred miles an hour grazed Drag Strip's rear tires – and without a forcefield to protect them, that was more than enough contact. The tires lost traction.

Drag Strip skidded sideways, all four front tires a blur as they fought to grip the floor, and barely managed not to crash into a wall. Snarling under his breath, he slammed his accelerator and raced on.

His only consolation was that Dead End needed a moment to turn and continue the chase, and of course, Dead End could never hope to match him in speed. His radio pinged madly with comms from Dead End, Soundwave – even Vortex, for some reason.

Drag Strip ignored them all. He just had to get rid of Dead End. If he knew the other 'cons, most of them would stay out of it, expecting Dead End to either run down or intimidate his errant subordinates the way Motormaster had always done. He could only hope he didn't have to worry about his other teammates as well, though at least it would be easy to hear Wildrider approaching if _he_ had joined the chase as well.

He cut right, swerved left, raced up a wall and did a stint along the ceiling to avoid a cleaning drone, hoping that the solvent-wet floor would send Dead End into a skid. Far behind him he heard the roar of thrusters as Dead End simply flew over that section.

Warnings flickered in his HUD - engine temperature rising, tire pressure elevated – but he ignored those as well. Through a storage bay with two sets of doors and he would be at the elevator – the storage bay was sure to be piled with equipment but he could fly over or twist around those, and it would be safer than taking the corridors. He blasted one set of doors open, sped into the storage bay and screeched to a halt.

The bay was empty except for the stacks of I-beams and crates of supplies piled high against the other set of doors. Far too many to shoot out of the way – and too risky, if they contained chemicals of any sort.

_The Constructicons were rebuilding this bay,_ Drag Strip thought with a sinking feeling even before he looked up to see that the entire ceiling – sixty feet above his head - had been removed. Bare pipelines gleamed dully and the bracing which supported the upper deck looked conspicuously bare, like a mech's struts with the components and wires stripped away.

_Dead End. He'll be here any second. Think!_

Drag Strip's mind raced faster than his wheels, and he transformed at once, drawing his gun. He heard the distant roar of Dead End's engine, growing louder.

_If this doesn't work-_-

Drag Strip forced all the fear down and pushed a control lever on the butt of his gun in the opposite direction, so that it would reduce gravity rather than increasing it. Then he turned the gun on himself and fired.

The solid deck beneath his feet lurched and then fell away as he shot straight up, faster than if he had fired his thrusters. Only his quick reflexes saved him from bashing his helm into one of the pipelines – and making a sound which would have alerted Dead End, who raced into the storage bay and deccelerated so fast that he nearly went into a skid.

The smell of scorched rubber crept into the air as he transformed and drew his gun. Drag Strip switched off his internal cooling fans so that even that slight sound wouldn't give him away, and held very still.

Sixty feet below him, Dead End glanced around.

_I could drop down on him. Crush him like a tin can._

No, that wouldn't work, not with Dead End's forcefield still active. And Drag Strip had a feeling that Megatron would take the attempted deactivation of a superior officer a bit more seriously than a brig escape (which, after all, showed initiative). If he attacked Dead End and didn't succeed, Motormaster's disappearance might be blamed completely on him as well.

So he stayed motionless while Dead End took a desultory look behind the stack of crates, sighing audibly when the effort revealed nothing. He transformed and drove back out.

Drag Strip felt better at once. His fans whirred back into life, lowering a core temperature that had climbed dangerously from his wild dash through the ship. And even though his access to the elevators had now been cut off, the open ceiling above him would let him cross over to another deck of the ship. Once he reached it and was safe he could figure out what to do next.

He grasped at the pipes surrounding him, testing each before he dared to let them support his weight – the effects of his gun were starting to wear off. _It's like being in a steel spiderweb,_ he thought as he climbed up.

Careful not to make a sound – he didn't want to emerge through the opening in the upper deck to see a circle of guns pointed at him – he climbed out, wincing as the edge of a floor panel scraped him hard enough to gouge a line in his armor. To his relief, no one was in sight, so he tapped his thrusters and flew a few yards away. He wasn't taking a chance on the floor near the gap; if enough of the load-bearing struts had been removed, it might give way beneath him.

"All Decepticons," Soundwave said again, in a voice as patient as water dripping on rock. "On alert for fugitive Drag Strip."

_Go frag yourself,_ Drag Strip thought. Settling back on to his feet, he looked around to get his bearings.

The first thing he saw was a door with a large gleaming sign on it saying SWINDLE'S EMPORIUM.

Drag Strip's lip curled. Not only was the sign gaudy, it was patently false. Breakdown had told him that Swindle moved the sign around periodically and was never actually behind it, in case of less-than-satisfied customers trying to find him.

Suddenly he missed Breakdown, but he told himself that he couldn't afford to be a weakling. Especially since he was deep in the Combaticon sector of the ship. He transformed, pulling a map of the ship up on his HUD and studying it for a way out as his engine revved into life.

He didn't know, afterward, if the sound had been warning enough or if the Combaticons had simply been monitoring him, but a door in the corridor ahead slid open. Vortex peered out around the edge of it, rotors making a dark V behind his helm, and waved cheerily at him.

"Hey, you can hide in here if you want," he called. "No one'll find you."

Drag Strip reversed instinctively, only to be halted when Soundwave's calm monotone thrummed through the intercom system. "All Decepticons. Fugitive Drag Strip sighted on Deck Six. Apprehension: a priority."

Drag Strip's engine roared, steering wheel spinning as he whirled from side to side, trying to spot the cameras (and hopefully blast them to bits). Naturally they were hidden. _And what does he mean, a priority? Don't they have energon to steal or Autobots to destroy?_

Frustrated, he came to a stop. Vortex hadn't moved, and Drag Strip hesitated. Every processor told him not to trust Vortex, but he was tired and knew he couldn't keep up the race much longer.

"How do I know you won't turn me in?" he said.

Vortex laughed. "When was the last time I played the obedient drone to High Command? Nothing to me either way, though – take your chances out there if you like." He drew back and started to pull the door shut.

Drag Strip wavered a moment longer, then gave in. He couldn't simply wait out there to be spotted and brought in again, and he needed a better plan than racing through the ship with his teammates in pursuit and Soundwave reporting on his whereabouts until his engine burned out. And Vortex _had _helped him get out of the brig.

"Okay," he said reluctantly and drove forward, turning sharply so that he sped past Vortex into the room. The door slid shut behind him.

* * *

"Breakdown, start searching Decks 3 to 5. I'm going to let Wildrider out of his room – we need all the help we can get. Megatron is aware of the jailbreak and he wants Drag Strip brought in immediately."

"I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't?"

"I can't go out there and drive around occupied decks. You know why."

"But you didn't mind them looking at you before."

"They were staring at Drag Strip, and even then Mixmaster noticed me. Please… just leave me be."

"Breakdown, I can't do this alone!"

"I can't do it at all. I'm sorry."

_-click-_

* * *

Drag Strip transformed, glancing around warily. He'd realized at once that the room wasn't Vortex's own quarters – it was empty aside for two chairs and a desk on which a few datapads were scattered. The walls were as bare and unrevealing as a closed door which seemed to lead to another room, and he instantly disliked the impersonality of the place.

Still, at least the constant pinging of his radio had stopped, which could mean that they had given up the chase.

_Or that the signals just aren't reaching me here._

Vortex strolled around him and sank into a chair behind the desk, rattling open a drawer to take something out. He stuck his feet out under the desk and Drag Strip saw him cross them comfortably, though whatever was in his hands wasn't in sight. His optics glowed and he sounded happy when he spoke, which only intensified Drag Strip's uneasiness.

"This is good," he said, then shook his head. "No, Onslaught would be more precise and say, _this is fortuitous_. Heh, I'd like to hear Breakdown try to pronounce that."

Drag Strip bristled – only the Stunticons got to make fun of Breakdown – but he decided to wait for a better time to teach Vortex that particular lesson. "What exactly is fortuitous?" To his annoyance, he nearly stumbled over that word too.

"Well, I wasn't sure how I'd find you after we both ran off, especially since you weren't answering your radio. But then you got here anyway. Lucky, huh?"

A cold finger traced its way down the back of Drag Strip's neck. "Why did you want me here?"

Vortex pushed the second chair forward with one foot. "Here, sit down."

Drag Strip sent a quick transmission to Dead End, but there was no response. "All that slag you told me in the cell," he said, struggling to keep his voice calm and even, "you didn't mean any of it, did you?" Was the door locked? He had to assume it was. If he transformed and reversed against it at full speed, it might not give way, but if he turned to blast it open, Vortex might shoot him in the back.

"Oh, I meant the part about Onslaught being a good commander," Vortex said lazily, slumping as far as he could in his chair as his rotors would allow him. "As for the rest… anything I said about you or our permanent leader-in-waiting… what do you think?"

_Can't transform,_ Drag Strip thought, _it'll take too long and he could shoot me while I'm doing that._ He folded his arms, which positioned his right hand at the point where his gun would emerge from subspace.

"What's all this about?" he said, not taking his optics off Vortex.

It was impossible to see anything behind the mask, but Vortex's shoulders moved in minute shivers that suggested silent laughter. "Haven't figured it out yet? You got rid of Motormaster and we all know it, so you might as well confess and get this over-"

Drag Strip drew his gun and fired. In the same instant Vortex slid off his chair, landing on his knees with a clank. A blast of pale energy hit the chair as it rocked backward and gravitational forces twisted it into a lump of metal, unrecognizable.

Before Drag Strip could shoot again, Vortex fired back from under the desk. A thick glob of glue, wet and repulsive, splatted against the edge of Drag Strip's foot and the floor beneath it.

Vortex flung himself to one side, sprawling sideways as Drag Strip fired again. The desk provided cover but it became instantly weightless when it absorbed the second shot. As if pulled by invisible wires, it sailed up to the ceiling. Drag Strip turned on his heel in a maneuver so practised it was instinct, drawing a bead on Vortex as he tried to scramble away.

He never got a chance for a third shot. The glue had hardened instantly, pinning his foot to the floor, and as he turned he lost his balance. He staggered for a moment before his reflexes compensated, but that was enough time for Vortex to take aim with something that glowed in a bright narrow line-

The laser-scalpel streaked through the air and buried itself in the gap of Drag Strip's's shoulder-joint. He gasped. White heat sliced through circuits and his arm spasmed involuntarily, fingers opening. His gun fell to the floor.

Vortex was on the floor as well, nearly ten yards away – he couldn't have reached the gun if he had been faster than Drag Strip in alt-mode. So he flung his own glue-gun at it instead, along the floor with a speed that knocked both weapons out of Drag Strip's reach. He heard them clang against the outer door and Vortex leaped to his feet, rotors to the wall as he hurried a circle around Drag Strip to reach both guns.

Drag Strip fought to lift his foot, but the glue held him to the floor as if he had been welded there. He nearly panicked – _what am I going to do, shoot my foot off?_ – but forced that down. _I still have a weapon, don't I?_

Jaws clamped against the pain, he closed his left hand around the hilt of the laser-scalpel embedded in his shoulder. He winced as he yanked it free. Behind him, he heard Vortex reach the outer door.

The laser-scalpel glowed brightly in his hand before its blade dimmed to nothingness and flickered out. Drag Strip stared at it in disbelief, then looked at the energy readout on the hilt. It had been preprogrammed with only a single charge.

Vortex, he was starting to realize, was nothing if not careful.

He heard a cheerful whistling from the door and the soft slide of metal over metal as Vortex retrieved both guns. _I need another weapon, something he doesn't expect. Hurry!_

Dropping the worthless scalpel, he thought of what he carried in his subspace compartments. Gloss guard, wax – _offer him a good polish if he lets me go?_ – some clean rags, a spanner – _hit him with that? Maybe he'll deactivate laughing_ – and a can of yellow spray paint for touch-ups.

The can was in Drag Strip's left hand at once; his right hand hung by his side uselessly. The laser-scalpel had sliced through a neural relay. He twisted the cap off the can.

"I'll get some nitric acid," Vortex said as he walked past. The tip of a rotor scraped against Drag Strip's immobilized leg. "That always dissolves the glue. Does some unlovely things to metal, too, but that would only be a problem if you were going to use your feet again-"

"Heads up, Vortex," Drag Strip said softly. Vortex was close enough to hear that, though, and he half-turned, curiosity flickering in his optics. Drag Strip's arm flashed up.

Paint spurted out in a cloud, spattering Vortex's face. He yelled, flailing instinctively and Drag Strip kept spraying. Vortex staggered back. The redness of his optics was no longer visible beneath a thick yellow smear and Drag Strip knew he could no longer see. Still, the movement got him out of range.

Drag Strip snarled wordlessly and pointed the can at the wall instead. He thought of writing "Drag Strip was here" but before he could get to the first "a" the paint ran out. Vortex stumbled to the other door, feeling for the handle with one hand and trying to wipe his face with the other. The effort only served to smear the paint around.

From a distance outside, footsteps clumped. Drag Strip's fuel pump slammed fresh energy into his components.

"Help!" he yelled, then thought, _Don't be an idiot, Autobots must scream for help all the time in here!_ "This is unauthorized! Report it to my superior officer, Mot-Dead End!"

With a crash, Vortex's desk hit the floor as the effects of the gravito-gun wore off. The vibrations of the impact shivered up Drag Strip's legs and the noise was so loud that his audials rang, but he still heard the outer door open as someone entered.

He turned in that direction as best he could and Brawl's fist rammed into his throat, crushing his vocalizer.

* * *

**Peacewish **: Oh, there's more action to come. The Stunticons always deliver in that regard. And now they're pitted against each other, with their skill turned against itself and their individual flaws coming to the forefront rather than being compensated for by their clannishness.

Drag Strip pays a pretty high price for all his mistakes, as usual. Poor Drag Strip. We writers always hurt the ones we love.

Thanks for your review! I'm really pleased that you're enjoying this fic so much. :)

**Fire From Above** : You're right – Motormaster doesn't see it from the other Stunticons' perspective. He knows that he's a vicious bastard towards them at times, but he justifies that as discipline or figures that it's balanced out by his taking responsibility for their safety.

And he can't stop being sadistic, any more than Wildrider could stop being crazy. He gets a kick out of abusing others, and his team make the easiest targets. But at least they won't take that lying down…

**Anhai** : Onslaught knows that Dead End won't allow Vortex to question any member of his team. So the Combaticons have only a narrow window of opportunity.

Everyone's time is running out in this fic. :)

Glad you enjoyed the chapter! Motormaster would be livid if he saw what had happened to his team, that's for certain. Split up, feuding among themselves even in the face of a common threat, at the mercy of the Combaticons of all mechs? This is what happens when you go against the natural order of things.

He'd be torn between enjoying their misery and wading in to set things right, with as much force as necessary and then some.

**Taipan Kiryu** : Most of the Decepticons don't see beyond Dead End's depression and apathy, but those qualities also mean he's difficult to intimidate. Remember in "Five Faces of Darkness", he was the one who first climbed out and approached the Quintessons? He can handle Starscream.

What he can't handle are the other Stunticons.

Thanks for reviewing!


End file.
